Discover More About The Box Elder

Box elder

I was planting flowers one afternoon this past spring when I jumped back from the flowerbed. On the ground in front of me were tons of bugs. I had never seen such strange looking bugs before but they were certainly enjoying lounging in my flowerbeds. I looked up and realized that not only were they taking over the flowerbed but they were all over the side of my house! I was not amused and disgusted by this sight. They were only congregating on the one side of my house which I thought to be a bit odd. I went inside and did a little bit of research to find out what these bugs were and how to get rid of them. It wasn't hard to determine that this funny looking bug was a box elder. I was happy to read that the box elder bugs were not harmful and don't bite. However, they weren't very pleasant to look at either. Much of the information I found kept referring to box elder bugs that are attracted to box elder trees. One way, I discovered, to eliminate this crowd of bugs was to rid of the female box elder trees. I had not a clue what a box elder tree looked like and I certainly couldn't go around chopping down my trees or my neighbors. My neighbors are nice people but they may not care for me too much if I just eliminate all of their trees hoping to find the box elder.

I read some information that told me to not squish them because they could stain the ground or side of my house. I also discovered that they weren't just hanging out on the side of my house to annoy me, they were enjoying the sun. How sweet for them. Supposedly if you squish them, they have a foul odor. To me, they sounded like such pleasant little creatures.

The best advice that I found was to use soapy water. Supposedly, soapy water kills the annoying little box elder bugs. I didn't see how that was possible but it seemed simple enough and I was willing to give it a try. I mixed up some nice soapy water as some instructions had told me and wandered outside. I looked at the tons of box elder bugs lined up on the house getting their suntans and started to spray like crazy. As soon as the mist of soapy water hit them, the majority of them fell right to the ground. Much to my surprise, many of them stopped moving. I sprayed as many as of those box elder bugs as possible, hoping that the massacre would end my woes.

Later that evening, I was walking down the hallway when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I turned on the light and was face to face with a box elder bug. We stared at each other for a moment. Wordlessly, I got out the vacuum cleaner and sucked him up. I'd won the battle for the day.