A Warmer Place to Sleep

It is the time of year when we get these stink bugs finding their way inside looking for a nice warm place to overwinter. Like our house becomes their Florida I guess. To be honest, we don’t get that many. At any one time, there may be 1 or 2 flying around.

The dispatching of creepy crawly things is my job. The problem with the stink bugs is that you really don’t want to squash them insider. Even running over a carcass with a vacuum cleaner isn’t pleasant.

But, because they are just a nuisance and just trying to survive, I don’t really want to take them outside and then squash them. So I have a catch and release policy when it comes to them. Not sure if I’m doing them any favors by releasing them into the cold but if they were resourceful enough to find their way in, then they can figure out another solution.

My wife really wanted to find a way to tag them – like a drop of nail polish on the back just to see how many make their way back in after being exiled. Admittedly, that would be an interesting experiment and I suspect some of them do make it back in but we’ve haven’t tried it yet.

Sometimes, I think they are asking for it when they fly right by you and land right in front of you. I’m not going to get a ladder and try and catch one hanging out high up. But if you are dumb enough to position yourself right in front of me, then you’ve just bought a one way ticket to go back out into the cold.

Now my live and let live doesn’t universally apply. We’ve had mice and they have to go even though they are kind of cute. But they just do too much damage to be allowed to remain. Same with ants. I don’t like dispatching spiders but I’m also not going to try and catch one so they get squashed. If I had a real infestation with the stink bugs, I’d probably think differently. For now, we have a truce.