Now that we know, the answer is to vacuum out all the stink bugs, freeze dry them, and market them as Hen Treats.
squirrels
Excellent idea!
Glad I could help.
I’ve yet to see any bugs make an escape but sometimes I’ll suck up a few cotton balls doused in alcohol before I put it away for the night.
We get a lot of live ticks off our critters, even with good bug killer on them and granules in the yard, well, anyway, we have a mason jar with a bit of paper towel % alcohol in the bottom to put them in so they don’t get a chance to reattach.
You obviously need to set up an auxiliary chicken coop around your fireplace. Just get some 1x2s and chicken wire and build a pen, add some pine shavings for bedding, tuck in a couple of hens, and open the flue.
No, seriously…Shop-Vac. If you clean it well before you vacuum out the flue, you can still feed them to the hens.
I wonder what caused them to find your chimney so inviting in the first place. Refuge from the hens?
Would YOU want to be the poor garbage collector who’s at hand if the bag breaks and hundreds/thousands of angry and hungry stink bugs come pouring out? Nightmares forever.
Just seeing a garbage bag undulating with hundreds/thousands of god-knows-what moving insects in it would give me permanent heebie-jeebies.
From wikipedia (about their behavior during fall and winter):
Adults can live from several months to a year.[7][8] They will enter under siding, into soffits, around window and door frames, chimneys, or any space which has openings big enough to fit through. Once inside the house, they will go into a state of hibernation. They wait for winter to pass, but often the warmth inside the house causes them to become active, and they may fly clumsily around light fixtures.
It doesn’t say anything about there being a whole nest of them though! That is weird.
Cilantro.
I love cilantro, but a lot of people say cilantro tastes like soap, and a lot also say that it smells like stink bugs (and I could see/smell the connection). So it all comes together.
Here.
Yes, please have a care for the garbage collector. Forget police officers and firefighters or even lobstermen, the most dangerous job in America is the garbage collector - and they get no respect. They pick up flimsy plastic bags that random people have filled with Og-knows-what and throw that into the maw of a machine specifically designed to crush organic matter. And they do this over and over, all day, while jumping on and off of a moving vehicle!
Seems like the right time to play the Chimney Song.
Dick Van Dyke.
Bricker?
If I had meant swifts, I would have said swifts.
Heebie-jeebies, nothing! Isn’t that how ‘Benny’ died in “The Mummy”? :eek:
Anyway, its gotta work better than turning the vacuum on in reverse and pointing it at a neighbor. I mean, that’d be like the ‘Hive-hand’ weapon from Half-Life…
I wonder if he could leave the vacuum outside in the hopes that it would just be stolen.
C.H.U.D.s?
You haven’t seen much overripe garbage, lucky you, if the thought of “moving insects” in it is a novelty to you. Any experienced garbage hauler has seen worse than stink bugs.
Canadians ?