Frozen Kamemushi
Kamemushi, commonly referred to as the Japanese stink bug, are fairly prevalent in Hokkaido. They are the skunk of the insect world. If they feel threatened, they will let off a nasty stench. I'd try to describe it, but how does one describe a smell to someone who has never smelled it (I've had this same problem trying to describe a skunk to my former English students)? When I was dog sitting, a kamemushi had crawled onto Woodley's favorite toy (Nana's toy, but his favorite while he was here), and he went for the toy. I had to wash it 3 times, and he still wouldn't touch it for a day and a half.
While they're usually more prevalent in late summer and into fall, you can find them in heated buildings all winter long. Such as my house. I'm in what is essentially a log cabin style home, not rounded logs, but shaped so I have flat walls. Regardless, there are a lot of little nooks and crannies in the joints of each piece where they can crawl in and dwell. I have quite a few in my house. Not like clouds of them swarming around, but I do find 2 or 3 per day sometimes. One does want to be careful in catching and disposing of them. Grabbing them with your hand will set them off, as will squishing them. Some people take a piece of masking tape or some such, stick them, then fold them inside the tape. Grabbing them in a tissue paper may set them off. Not having the tape around, I began getting them to crawl onto a business card I had lying on the table, walking over to the back window, and dropping them outside into the snow.
When I moved in a couple of years back, there was a bit of a fly issue in the place. Again, log cabin sort of building, lots of places for them. I've had a decent amount of success with some fly traps I built from empty plastic pop/sports drink/whatever bottles (hack off about the top 1/3, drop some bait inside, invert the top you've cut off and stick it back on). This past summer, I figured out another way to get rid of them. Climb the stairs into the loft on occasion during the day, open the window up there, and let them all fly free. It's darker, and they congregate in the window anyway, so quite a few of them shoo away each time.
The attic window is above the window on the ground floor that I flick the kamemushi out. I noticed the other day that there were quite a few little dark spots in the snow back there. A lot of the flies were going out into the colder air outside and just dropping, and the kamemushi weren't going far either. Yet, I figured the number that I've thrown out there, perhaps there should be more. Granted, it's snowed a few times, so there's probably some buried out there, but we've had a couple of warmer days, and I know I've seen more out there...
This morning, I was sitting at the computer, and caught some movement at the edge of my peripheral vision. A couple of small birds (sparrows, I think. I'm not an ornithologist) were in the branches of the small tree that stretch across the view from that window. I got up and slowly approached the window from an angle so that I wouldn't scare the birds away. They were dropping down to the snow, grabbing a fly or a kamemushi, then hopping back up to the branches to eat them. I figure it's much better to be feeding the birds in winter than to be dropping dead bugs into the garbage.
While they're usually more prevalent in late summer and into fall, you can find them in heated buildings all winter long. Such as my house. I'm in what is essentially a log cabin style home, not rounded logs, but shaped so I have flat walls. Regardless, there are a lot of little nooks and crannies in the joints of each piece where they can crawl in and dwell. I have quite a few in my house. Not like clouds of them swarming around, but I do find 2 or 3 per day sometimes. One does want to be careful in catching and disposing of them. Grabbing them with your hand will set them off, as will squishing them. Some people take a piece of masking tape or some such, stick them, then fold them inside the tape. Grabbing them in a tissue paper may set them off. Not having the tape around, I began getting them to crawl onto a business card I had lying on the table, walking over to the back window, and dropping them outside into the snow.
When I moved in a couple of years back, there was a bit of a fly issue in the place. Again, log cabin sort of building, lots of places for them. I've had a decent amount of success with some fly traps I built from empty plastic pop/sports drink/whatever bottles (hack off about the top 1/3, drop some bait inside, invert the top you've cut off and stick it back on). This past summer, I figured out another way to get rid of them. Climb the stairs into the loft on occasion during the day, open the window up there, and let them all fly free. It's darker, and they congregate in the window anyway, so quite a few of them shoo away each time.
The attic window is above the window on the ground floor that I flick the kamemushi out. I noticed the other day that there were quite a few little dark spots in the snow back there. A lot of the flies were going out into the colder air outside and just dropping, and the kamemushi weren't going far either. Yet, I figured the number that I've thrown out there, perhaps there should be more. Granted, it's snowed a few times, so there's probably some buried out there, but we've had a couple of warmer days, and I know I've seen more out there...
This morning, I was sitting at the computer, and caught some movement at the edge of my peripheral vision. A couple of small birds (sparrows, I think. I'm not an ornithologist) were in the branches of the small tree that stretch across the view from that window. I got up and slowly approached the window from an angle so that I wouldn't scare the birds away. They were dropping down to the snow, grabbing a fly or a kamemushi, then hopping back up to the branches to eat them. I figure it's much better to be feeding the birds in winter than to be dropping dead bugs into the garbage.