Many people in my part of the state have problems with stinkbugs and ladybugs this time of year. Basically, they want indoors, where it’s warmer than outside. Actually, neither one has invaded my house in large numbers, although a few have gotten in. For some reason, this fall is producing way more Asian ladybugs than the Asian stinkbugs, crawling all over my windows and window screens. They’re fine outside, where they’re aphid vacuum cleaners, just like our native ladybugs, but who the heck wants them indoors?
I can look out a window, and see them almost swarming like gnats. Every time I open the door to let the dog in or out, two or three more get inside. They have an orange shell over their wings instead of the usual true red.
They’re easy to nail with a flyswatter, but they do kind of smell when squashed. It’s not the kind of burnt sugar mixed with a bit of funk smell the stinkbugs let off, though. Maybe it’s the Indian summer we’re having; most of them would have normally died off a month ago or so.
Weird…I’ve never seen an orange one and never had one get indoors. Perhaps we don’t get them this far south. I rarely see any red ladybugs either.
Maybe you do have to live about four hours north to see these pests. Until I moved to this state, I’d never seen a stinkbug, although we used to have lots of the red ladybugs when I was a kid, and they were fun to watch. None of them ever tried to swarm to get into the house like these do.
I’d never seen nut sedge, either, until I moved to this state, but it’s a big problem here. That’s a weed that looks a bit like sawgrass, but grows upright, twice as fast as any other grass.
It’s all part and parcel of living in a part of the country that I really love, so in the end, I deal with it.
Aw, lady bugs, they are so pretty and cute.
About ten years ago my apartment was invaded by earwigs…. they looked scary.
We get these yellow Japanese ladybugs. They get in the house and soon they’re everywhere, crawling on you, making weird smells. The best way I’ve found to combat them is the hose attachment on the vacuum cleaner. They love to get all over windows (like some ladybug version of the Amityville Horror) so I go to the window and suck ’em up with the hose. It doesn’t get rid of them entirely (nothing does), but it keeps their numbers down considerably.
Yup, some of them do have yellow shells, but we mostly get the orange-y ones. We use the vacuum cleaner hose technique for sucking up spiders and wasps (anything from yellowjackets to hornets, that seem to like the window wells). Tried that technique once with the Asian stinkbugs, but they let off their stink inside the vacuum cleaner, which is no more pleasant than letting it rip throughout a room.
If you get these ladybugs invasions that far south at this time of year, it probably is the Indian summer we’re having that is responsible for it. Typically, this time of year, it freezes overnight, and maybe gets into the low 60s during the day, if we’re lucky, with full sun. We’ve had a few light frosts overnight, but it’s getting into the low 80s during the day, which is weird for 2/3 of the way through October.
We also should have had one hard frost by now, but we haven’t. That means we can still harvest our green tomatoes. Although they’re small, they’re still good for salsa, and making pies that have a mix of sweet apples and tart green tomatoes. Make do, right?