With the colder temperatures, the spotted lanternflies have stopped being such a pest, in part because they are almost all dead. Can you tell I have no love lost for these invasive creatures?

In the summer of 2019, spotted lanternflies were prevalent in Bethlehem, but not in my area. Sure, I saw a couple, but they really weren’t that bad. Then in 2020, the year of the plagues, the stinking little creatures were all over the place.

I really thought that wouldn’t be the case. My husband and I had tried valiantly to scrape off all the egg nests we could find on our trees last fall.

Still they infested my birch tree this summer and nearly killed it. This birch tree is special to me, because I bought it as a sapling from Kmart eons ago for $17. Now it’s tall and beautiful, that is until the spotted lanternflies started sucking the life out of it.

My husband and I took to an all-out assault on these bugs in an effort to save our beloved tree.

Every time I needed a break from my computer, I’d go out to my front porch with a fly swatter and smack into oblivion 20 to 40 of them.

My husband tried to kill as many as he could, too, off the tree. We tried sticky tape and other barriers, but it just wasn’t putting a dent into the population. That’s when I suggested we try the ShopVac. We didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a try. Lo and behold, it did!

Lanternflies are really dumb. They will actually fly into a wall, smack it and fly away. Anyway, they are quite easy to kill, too. Just bouncing around the ShopVac’s expandable tube was enough to kill them on their way to the bucket.

Every day after work, my husband went out to the tree and did away with the little creeps. He would easily get 300 a night. Still, night after night, they just kept coming. We wondered if we were cleaning out the neighbors’ trees as well.

After a few weeks of this ritual, some of our neighbors asked us why he was vacuuming our tree, to which we happily explained our endeavor. Oblivious to the plagues in their own trees, it was really an eye-opener when they looked up and saw the little beasts crawling around on their limbs.

The nightly vacuuming has come to an end, but they are totally gone. They have left something behind - their egg nests for next summer.

Take action now. Scour your trees. I’m serious.

The nests look like a flat smudge of dirt about 2 inches long on the limbs and trunk of the trees. There could be hundreds of these nests on your trees. Fortunately, they are easy to scrape off and are just powdery, not goopy or icky. Just make sure to capture the contents on some sticky tape and dispose of it in a plastic bag tied tight. Don’t just let the powder fall on the ground.

If you think this is all silliness, take heed, my friend. They’re headed for your backyard next summer.

Like Benjamin Franklin said, actually about fire safety, but nevertheless, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”