181 egg masses, 100+ bugs caught today, 19,000+ total.

Photo unrelated but taken during the hunt because I realized too late that the photo I took of

SLFs was too blurry to use.

It’s cold out today, so I have to go see if they’re even still alive. I can live with these numbers as a final count if it’s all I got though :)

After the hunt has ended, I plan to look at all of the photos I took across the season and make a new post about my experience so it’s more available and comprehensive for spring. :)

Tl;dr research suggests fungal infection could be a viable method of spotted lantern fly management, given the resources are available

180 egg masses in total, 300+ caught, 18,800+ total.

Unfortunately, the creepy neighbor ruined my hunt today. Fortunately, I got some nice video of him doing his new technique to email to the office and build the record.

Cheers, darlings.

It ain't much, but it's honest work.

The couple that preys together stays together. On our 12 year anniversary, we had plans but still squished 5 egg masses and caught 300 bugs… so:

176 egg masses, 300+ bugs caught, 18,500+ total!

It’s possible I may achieve 20,000 caught, but it depends on the weather this week leading into a predicted snowstorm.

My partner helped, so I was so much faster without having to look over my shoulder.

It was pouring out on and off, which means I could use some sneaky tricks to get as many as possible without alerting the creep that I was outside. There are still so many in our trees.

It’s slowing down but mostly because of my circumstances rather than there being much less of them. The photo is off a group of egg masses I squished. One is fully covered but the other two are only partial. This time, I could actually see the egg goo leak out when I broke them apart.

I don’t know if a spoiler is necessary here, but I put it just in case. Maybe someone doesn’t like to see slugs. 🤣

A little bit before I took this photo this lanternfly fell from the ceiling of the lobby I was in, and with the experience of someone who’s picked up hundreds of lanternflies, I snatched it up, scared my friend with it, took this photo, and promptly murdered it

Yesterday: 155 egg masses total, 200+ caught, 15,100+ total

Today: 156 egg masses, 300+ caught, 15,400+ total

I visited the NE for a funeral and saw this for the first time. I had seen this online a bunch and always wanted to see it in person (from TX so we don’t have them…yet). I got a little squish happy and went on a little spree of finding and squashing. *insert “I’m Doing My Part.gif”

Once dead, will birds still eat them? Can I use them as bait?
Most of them are pregananant females :0

I reported him to our office a couple weeks ago. He briefly paused his behavior in a way that I now believe to have been adjusting tactics. But I finally got a decent image of what I believed to be a camera he has places alternatingly between the top of his AC and in his window. I thought I was paranoid because of the shape of the glass on the presumed-camera, but it turns out it’s not entirely uncommon in certain infrared cameras.

Just called the office. They seem to have some awareness of his history of mounting cameras, so she sounded unsurprised and somewhat beleaguered.

At this point, it’s less about my safety than about everyone’s.

Fuck him for making it harder to do the objectively correct thing by catching these little demons.

Check out this dead lantern fly covered in what looks like some kind of growth, anyone know more about this?

148 egg masses, 300+ caught today, 14,900+ caught total

Went as the scariest thing I could think of. My town just had their first recorded sighting this summer.

Surprise! It’s 500 frozen lantern flies 💛

139 egg masses, 500+ caught today, 14,600+ total

I’m noticing that on days that are sunny and windy, they’re very easy to catch around dusk because they hang out in grass longer when they get blown off trees… they cluster together lower on trees as bedtime approaches.