What's that smell? The marmorated stink bug has arrived

Columnist John Kelly, writing in the October 15, 2009 Washington Post:

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What's That Smell?

If your house has become a haven for squarish brown bugs about the size of a thumbnail [top], you are not alone. The brown marmorated stink bug -- Halyomorpha halys -- has arrived.

"This is just the vanguard, basically," said University of Maryland entomologist Mike Raupp. In parts of Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey, it's not unusual to find thousands of them in a home.

Mike said he's heard of people returning from vacation to find a room dark with stink bugs that crawled in through a gap in a window sill or a chink in a sash.

"It's got to be downright creepy," he said. And yet, like a marine biologist who studies sharks -- or any of several characters from the "Alien" franchise -- Mike is fascinated by these creatures.

"They're very cool animals," he said. "They look alien and prehistoric at the same time."

Mike acknowledges that, cool or not, the bugs are a concern. The stink bug, an invasive species from Asia that made its American debut in 1996 in, of all places, Allentown, Pa., feeds on plants. They're known to be partial to plums, peaches and apples, and there is concern they could devastate soybean crops.

The cool weather is sending the stink bugs to bed, but come spring, they'll be back.

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More here (scroll down to the bottom, click on "Bug of the Week Archive," then scroll down to October 5, 2009).