Residents of California’s Sierra Nevada region are expressing their frustration with a bug infestation that is making life extremely difficult.
“They’re in everything. There’s no way to get rid of them or eradicate them. They’re just here,” said Blair Nicodemus, 33, of Lone Pine, while driving with a bug creeping on his windshield. “Sometimes there will be these micro-plumes that’ll come through where there will be just thousands of them, and they’ll be all over you. … I’m sure I’ve eaten at least two dozen, because they get into your food.”
The bugs have been so thick at times that their carcasses are piled up inches deep after being plowed away from gas stations and other areas with significant amounts of nighttime light.
“Millions, tens, twenty, we can’t count it,” gas station owner Soma Praba said. “At night time, if you go into the station, they’ll follow. They go everywhere. They get on your body, your head.”
David Haviland, an entomologist with the University of California Cooperative Extension in Kern County, says the bugs are Melacoryphus lateralis, a red and black seed bug.
Some stores in the region have even cut their nighttime hours to avoid having to deal with the bugs. Hotels are telling guests to make sure doors are kept closed.
“If frogs come, we’re all leaving,” Ridgecrest Mayor Peggy Breeden said.
I have noticed that we seem to have had some scourge very other year her in NC. Ants, hornets, voles (mole like except they have tails like mice) that eat the roots of your grass. Then this last two years, carpenter bees boring holes in wood, even treated wood. Before all of these were the beetles eating the leaves clean on some trees.