Here's a question to kick off 2025, addressed to the stink bug pictured above: did it really have to be the finger space of our storage room's tape dispenser? Was that the only place you could think of to curl up and shrivel and die?
And so by extension to all that deceased creature's kind, the dozens of dead or dying stink bugs (official moniker: brown marmorated stink bug or BMSB) I have found, since summer turned to fall and fall to winter, between pool cushions, in the folds of parasols and curtains, in door and window frames, under note pads, etc, etc, this year and every year. Somehow these critters find value in expiring in or on things that are indoors, warm, and frequently handled.
Even in their vigorous youth, few bugs are uglier and none clumsier (although, as an ex-New Yorker, I can attest that roaches are grosser). True, stink bugs are harmless to us humans. But they're also bulbous, slow, noisy, and, yes, if squashed... So can we find anything good to say, other than that they make most other bugs look good? Well one scientific article concludes that the wounds BMSBs inflict on plants release sugars on which wasps and ants can feed, with positive knock-on effects in the ecosystem said better-fed wasps and ants operate in. Given that wasps and ants are amongst the top three bugs I'm constantly at war with at Poggiosole (mosquitoes were on that list too, but we've found a way to more or less eliminate them) I'm not so sold on that pitch. Try again: here's an article by a stink bug enthusiast in the UK who reminds us that the English prefer the more elegant-sounding "shieldbug" and suggests we "get used to the smell". Strike two.
But there is at least one stink bug that has brightened my mood every time I open a particular children's book. Not becasue I find its crispy carcass flattened between pages, but because, as depicted by illustrator
EG Keller, it delightfully lampoons the stiff and churchy manner of former US Vice President Mike Pence. Now Mike Pence is probably a decent enough guy. It was just 12 months ago that Donald Trump expressed support to a mob bent on hanging Pence by the neck, after which Pence ran a terribly earnest presidential campaign which failed to gather steam. So, a rough year for Mike. But I still have to hand it to John Oliver, the late-night comedy show host, who, back in 2018, put together an alternative version of the pollyanna Pence-branded children's book A Day in the Life of the Vice President. At our home in Florence, Oliver's book (which, unlike the original, credibly posits that Mike Pence "isn't very fun") sits in our boys' bookshelf, and I've read it to Max and Sam many times. I always smile when I get to the stink bug spreads, with Pence's marmorated likeness peremptorily announcing to two boy bunnies "YOU CAN'T GET MARRIED!" I adopt a huffy baritone to pronounce those words, but it's the drawing that really sings. And, were it not for stink bugs, or shieldbugs, or BMSBs, said drawing would not exist. So there. Something good to say about them.
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