Today marks the fourth time I've seen a lanternfly and the first time I've tried to kill one. They say that you should kill one every time you see it, because they're invasive and explosive and all that. But I have a different ethic. If an insect gets into my home its life is forfeit. If I encounter a bug in nature and it doesn't bite or otherwise molest me, I leave it alone.
Lanternflies look kind of pitiful when they just walk on the ground. When they fly they're sort of pretty, in a way. It was one that had just landed that I tried to stomp on. Figured it had made a good show. But it leaped away before I could reach it.
I'm not that bothered. Things have a way of balancing out. And a huge number of bird species eat insects, especially birds with pointy beaks. They seem to have put the kibosh on the cicada swarm we were supposed to get last year.
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Well, that makes four more lanternflies than either of us have seen. On its own it's not an unattractive beast with its wings spread but looking at pictures of a swarm isn't so nice to see - particularly when they're eating trees and favourite flowers. This girl came up with a pretty clever way of catching them without having to use insecticides or stepping on them.
https://youtu.be/yjOKIOOw1ZA?si=p2I7ltdOigx8k9dA
Apparently, bats also enjoy them as a filling meal.
I agree with you that things do eventually even out without our interfering at all. In fact, that alone has caused a problem in that there have been so many tons of insecticides sprayed on the fields in the west that it's become noticeable. People driving across the country have reported their windshields not catching nearly as many bugs as used to be the case. Not that it was fun scraping bug corpses off the glass, but it has caused the complication of fewer insect eating birds.
Did you ever hear the story about how the famine of 1958 to 1962 in China began? At least part of it was due to Chairman Mao ordering peasants to bang pots and pans to chase sparrows away from the fields. Then insects were free to eat the crops with the result that millions of people died.
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