The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

So we have five seasons, eh? Or more? Let’s see: Summer,  Autumn, Winter, Spring, Mud, Leaves, Road construction. Any more? 

Yes. I have yet another season to add to that list: The season of Asian beetles, which are coming to life in the south windows of the house as the bugs warm up and begin to move around. Apparently, these things have the ability to magically move through house walls and windows. How they get through these walls of mine–spray foamed, and through the windows, new and also foam-caulked–is a mystery. A mystery that is only explained by some kind of magic.

The only good thing about them is they’re small. Now that they’re warming themselves up in the light over the kitchen table, they apparently fall asleep and fall onto the kitchen table. You only have to squish one of them to realize they smell bad. When they fall into my coffee, they don’t make much of a splash. (On the list of “good things about Asian beetles,” you can see that it’s a short list.”

  I keep a vacuum cleaner over by the south windows, and once a day at about noon when they’re coming alive by almost the hundreds, I fire up the vac and suck them up.

You can imagine what the vacuum cleaner smells like.

Although this is an unproven “good thing” about Asian beetles, they seem to keep the Box Elder bugs away, because I don’t have them any more. 

I have to add to this that the Asian beetle is yet another government/committee/citizen solution to a problem that turned into yet another problem. We imported them because they eat an aphid that invades pecans. The beetles also like an aphid that invades soybeans, which is how they got here. Just another one of many examples of human solutions to problems that turned out to be problems.

On this list of problems which we have solved by creating other problems, I have creeping charlie, introduced in the thirties to hold down soil during the drought, and Chinese elms, also about then. There’s more of our “solutions” to talk about, but I’m busy.

I have to go suck up some more bugs. Hoover’em a last ride to vacuum heaven.