Send Us Your Stink Bugs, Will You, China?

Some people are very concerned about the next invasive species vying to be the DEATH OF AMERICA!!!, the brown marmorated stink bug, also known as the Asian stink bug. “This is something we’re calling ‘the perfect pest,’” says University of Maryland entomologist Mike Raupp. “Because it feeds on fruit, it feeds on corn, it feeds on soy beans, it feeds on vegetables and it comes into your house.” More, umm, xenophobically, Valeria Studal of New Jersey’s Star-Ledger writes:

“Where did they come from and what are they up to? The stink bugs in question are Chinese imports, first reported around Allentown, Pa., in 1996. They probably arrived in packing material with shipped goods-isn’t everything we buy these days made in China? Since touching down in America, the Asian stink bug has made remarkable progress for an insect that can take half an afternoon to make its way across your living room.
They have infiltrated the mid-Atlantic states and made inroads into the Pacific Northwest, where a separate colony is spreading out. They are rapidly overtaking populations of native stink bugs, which mainly plague cotton farmers in the Southeast. Marmorated stink bugs are well on their way to becoming an agricultural pest and a nuisance to homeowners, who frankly don’t wish to share their homes with the lower orders.”

Stink bugs eat vegetables, and spread yeast and pathogens to crops with their “dirty-needle” proboscises, but they don’t bite people like bedbugs. So it’s not the end of the world if they get inside your home for the winter. And before we get all up in arms about the putrid odor they release when threatened or squished, let’s remember what Western tourists are doing to the Great Wall of China at the boozy raves and campout parties we keep throwing alongside it. Says conservationist William Lindesay, an officer of the Order of the British Empire, “People are relieving themselves all over it.”