One Chicago suburb is now contending with one of the worst pest insects in the United States. They’re ugly, smelly, and make your skin crawl just as much as any roach or mosquito. They are the Stinkbug
isa Vraniak wanted quiet when she and her family moved from Chicago to Towers Lake.
“I wasn’t going to hear the trash trucks in the alley, and I wasn’t going to hear people coming home at 3 o’clock in the morning from the bars,” she says.
But now some disrupters are inside their northwest suburban house.
“We have a stink bug invasion for the second year in a row,” Vraniak says.
The invaders earn their name.
It’s believed the first stink bugs arrived in the United States in Pennsylvania nearly 20 years ago, in shipping crates from China.
They’ve been in the Barrington area since 2009.
“These particular bugs, stink bugs, feed on produce. They feed on vegetables, pear trees, apple trees,” Peter Schopen of Schopen Pest Solutions says.
Schopen recommends making sure homes are sealed tight and perhaps bringing in exterminators to use micro-encapsulated pesticides.
As for the Vraniaks, they’re looking forward to December and January.
“This Florida girl is actually wishing for a very long, cold, freezing winter to kill them off.”
