Hi everyone! I have not been able to get here for awhile either...."greenspun too busy". So, does anyone else in other parts of the country get besieged with stinkbugs? There are two different kinds here that come in the house....one is brownish and has a long (nearly an inch) and slender body; the other is blackish and more rounded flatter kind of body. They both come in in the fall thru the teensyest little cracks you can imagine. They are prehistoric looking and love to fall off the ceiling on you when you are sleeping. You awaken in the night to this weird sweet/sour smell and wonder where it is. You know you have to move to turn on the light and find it or you will never get back to sleep, but you know if you move it will probably squirt more of that horrible smell...and it could be under your head! They are very quiet and just "appear" in the wierdest places...like one time I was lifting my fork to my mouth for a bite and just happened to look down in the nick of time...one was just standing on my food, antenna raised looking at me. I came damn close to putting him in my mouth! I saw what happened when one of my cats got one in her mouth...it was awful. She frothed at the mouth and slung her head from side to side for about half an hour till she finally calmed down. Everytime the weather warms up a few degrees, say above 32, they seem to rehatch and a whole new bunch of them come out. These guys are truly a mystery to me. Never had them anyplace else I have lived. I am beginning to think of them as the state bird here in Idaho! Anyone else get these things??

Idaho Gal

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2003

Answers

The only kind of stink bug we have down here is a little ('bout 3/8 - 1/2" l.) black and gray little bug that crawls really slowly. The only time it emits a musky odor (kind of like old musty cigar smell) is when it gets squished, or has a close call like that.

Now if you want to talk cockroaches, boy, can I tell you some stories. Like the time a train hit a cockroach near my home . . . derailed that sucker but good. :^)

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2003

Dang J.R. I'm staying the heck out of Texas!!!

Yea we get those huge black beatle stink bugs. If they are troubled they lift their butt and excrete this drop of foul smell! One reason I built my house out of rocks and slab floor with a concrete roof was that I got tired of living with bug folks that I didn't invite!!! My last house I got up in the night to get rid of a lizzard that was sleeping with me. I got up quick too!! I sympathize....Kirk

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2003

If I had stinkbugs, I wouldn't admit it . . . :-D

Seriously, I haven't encountered any around here. I think there are some up north where Julie is. Besides her, I mean. Oops, I guess there is a stinkbug down here -- ME! {Big Grin}

-- Anonymous, February 06, 2003

Only a few stinkbugs around here, yep, it sure is pathetic when a dog or cat licks a stinkbug, boy, they only do that once, sort of like when they lick a toad!!!

Our Biblical Pest is ladybugs, not the native kind, the ones the USDA imported from Asia, some years they get in the house by the thousands, they go to the windows and you can vaccuum up a few hundred in no time. Fortunately, we have only a few, like twenty or thirty, in the house at a time, this year. Sometimes a few black beetles we call oat bugs come inside as well, and they bite. We had those in plague numbers when we live up north next to a grain farmer, but there are no grain farms at all here!?

-- Anonymous, February 09, 2003