Where's My Stink Bugs, Damn It.

Posted @ Dec. 21 2011 10:37AM by Bob Carey - home-garden

This time last year, arm chair pundits said the smart money was on whoever was the first to market with a device that captured lots of stink bugs... and killed them and mashed them up and made their lives miserable and...

So this past summer, there came a trap that worked well and had been avaiable everywhere; traps that will catch stinkers in and out of the house... only then the same folks were bellyaching because they were not finding bugs in their traps. What's up with people anyway? I'll tell you what I know.

My years as a practicing horticulturalist have practically required me to become a Horticulural Therapist. Though it shouldn't be confused with the Horticultural Therapy practiced by the folks at Pinnacle Health for example. it is a valid, productive paradigm for addressing people's woes using plants and the garden as a worry doll.

Ground down by four or five years of "hell-in-a-handbasket" economics, folks are pissed off and scared. The sense of losing control has provoked folks to rally against Wall Street, fall out with their neighbors and generally search (usually unconscoinably) for some challenge they can manage or vanquish.

Enter the STINK BUG. Halyomorpha halys. Like a plague critter, it impinged on the security of our gardens and assaulted our humble refuges. It's ugly (I guess), smells lousy, and has a habit of dropping in on our most personal activities; showering, eating soup or curling up to sleep.

Stink bugs are a perfect stand in for the myriad challenges and annoyances that plague life in these dismal times. Whack 'em and we reassert some control over our lives and maybe we feel like we can tackle, or at least, cope with other challenges that remain out there.

So, when stink bugs failed to make an appearance in satisfying numbers because of weather (whack the weatherman) or whatever, folks felt cheated of a therapeutic opportunity and the dreaded sense of life out of control reasserted itself in a different iteration.

So here were. No stink bugs to slay. Folks left frustrated, angry, and scared. It's going to be a long winter.

Happily, this is all fertile grounf for the Horticulutural Therapist. Like all the helping professions, I earn my bread on the fears and phobias of people who do normal, productive things for a living. All winter I'll spend casually, but attentively, collecting jars of stupified stink bugs that'll accompany me on my rounds next season; little reminders to folks that I can help them regain control.

All is not calm and bright though as I sip cocoa and bide my time till the crocuses reconnoiter the landscape next Spring. What if some new critter steals the lead in the angst war; what if the economy improves? What if gas drops to two dollars a gallon? DAMN IT!