A Day at the Beach for the Box Elder Bugs

I don’t care if you’re harmless. I don’t like you Mr. Box Elder Bug.

Actually, I have nothing against you as an individual. But you never walk alone, do you? There must be a thousand of your look-alike brethren piled atop each other on my once clean lavender clapboards. It happens every spring, when the sun warms the ground or the wood or wherever you and your kind hide out during the winter.

I go outside expecting to be pleased by the sunshine and warm air. I am greeted by squirmy scrums, knots of little black and red ovals or convoys of you guys, lined up nose to tail, sunbathing.

Making matters worse, you never stay outside. You always find a route indoors where you head right to the windows and try to get back outside.

When the sun sets and you retreat to your hidden hives or nests or insect apartment complexes inside my walls, I see Box Elder Bub poop stains on the siding I spent years stripping, sanding, priming and painting. And your poop, once dried, apparently is made of permanent ink.

So here’s the deal, Mr. Box Elder Bug: I’m holding a can of insecticide. It’s the kind that can shoot several yards. It will probably stain my paint worse than does your excrement, but I’m in an “I don’t care” mood. You’ve gotta ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya’ punk?