09/02/2026
The south wall of the house looks like it has been sprinkled with pepper. Hundreds of them, black with three thin red stripes, sitting in the afternoon sun and not doing much of anything.
Those are box elder bugs, and September is their month for this. They spend the summer in maple trees eating seeds, and when the nights cool they come looking for a warm surface to sit on. A sunlit wall is a heat lamp. They will sit there for weeks, and a few will squeeze into the siding to sleep out the winter.
That is the whole story. They do not bite. They do not breed inside. They do not eat wood, cloth, food, or the houseplants. The only real complaint against them is that a crushed one leaves a rust stain, so do not crush them. A vacuum takes the ones that wander in, and caulk around the windows keeps the rest outside, which is where they were going to spend the winter anyway.
Spraying the wall accomplishes nothing but a wet wall. The sun will move, the cold will come, and they will be gone. 🍁
