LETTER- Nature can squish stinkbugs

Based solely on my own observation, I have seen plenty of these bugs around, [September 25 news: "Bugged out: Albemarle swarming with stink bugs,"but mostly at other people's houses. There has not been any excessive infestation on our home.

I would simply remove them to outside with my hand or let them crawl onto a piece of paper and then shake them off. What I noticed over the summer around my front door was way more spiders.

They looked like very well fed, fat, grey, widow types. They'd weave scattered, random, net-like webs across corners. In these, I'd see rock solid evidence of packaging up the little stink buggers and eating them.

It may even be they were letting them rot slightly first, to properly "ripen" this newfound delicacy. I've also seen what seems an unusually large number of whitish toads, and often sitting near these webs eyeing these spiders.

I believe that when given time and left alone, Mother Nature will prevail. Those people who may try to eradicate with poisons populations of "noxious" organisms (the kind that reproduce in the thousands each season) only play into Nature's method of selection and mistakenly encourage the "survival of the fittest" for the most undesirable species targeted.

Introducing a non-native predator is also a grave mistake. Let's live and learn from history– the kudzu experience, for example. In the the Works Progress Administration initiatives during the New Deal, the logical thought was that a quick-growing vine would check erosion on sloped roadside construction. This mistake has, through the subsequent decades, ruined millions of acres of land in this nation. 

Brian Veerhoff
Boyd Tavern

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