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‘Squash It! Smash It!’: Pennsylvania Implores Residents to Kill an Invasive Bug on Sight

Hordes of spotted lanternflies are flapping through the state, threatening agriculture. “They jump, they’re big, they’re scary,” one Pennsylvanian said. “It’s like all of your worst nightmares coming to fruition.”

Dozens of spotted lanternflies, an invasive species, meeting their end on a flytrap at a park in Montgomery County, Pa.Credit...Daniel Vasta for The New York Times

Pennsylvanians cannot stomp their feet fast enough.

They are trying. But no matter how many spotted lanternflies they crush underfoot, they cannot seem to keep the hordes of the invasive insect from flapping in their faces, sucking nutrients from valuable vineyards and lurking in their nightmares. Even after death, they pester commuters when their carcasses crunch underfoot on city sidewalks.

The inch-long creatures, which look a bit like moths and hide scarlet wings beneath gray spotted ones, moved into Philadelphia in recent weeks, swarming around parks and skyscrapers and drawing a clear response from officials: “Kill it!” a state website blares by way of advice to residents who encounter the flies. “Squash it, smash it … just get rid of it.”

In response to the insect infiltration, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has quarantined 14 counties — regulating what can be taken in and out — and has set up a portal and a hotline (1-888-4BADFLY) to report sightings of the species, which is native to parts of Asia.

The lanternflies have already been spotted in eight states, from Virginia to Massachusetts, leading to quarantines and yearlong abatement efforts. Left alive, the pests could continue flying into more states, injuring trees, reducing fruit yields and hurting farmers’ bottom lines.

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A carcass on the sidewalk in central Philadelphia.Credit...Daniel Vasta for The New York Times

And then there is the daily annoyance.

“If it would just leap away, people wouldn’t mind it as much, but it seems to always be in your mouth — or on you and trying to get in your mouth,” said George Holmes, the mayor of Hamburg Borough in Berks County, Pa., where the flies were first found in 2014. They are believed to have arrived among a shipment of stones from Asia.

Pennsylvanians have come up with many other methods of pulverizing the lanternflies, involving baseball bats, questionable chemical solutions and even stacks of textbooks. Mr. Holmes’s dog, Josephine, has a knack for leaping into the air and snagging the bugs with her teeth before spitting them out and stomping on them. Still, no method has been more popular than the classic foot-stomp, which seems to have united residents as if it were a service requirement of living in the state.

“I saw a couple stomp on them, as everyone is taking great pride in doing,” said Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg, a lawyer in Philadelphia, who was quick to add that he had also done his part. “I saw one and I stepped on it, and I looked around and there were a bunch of carcasses. And then you realize, they’re fluttering all over the place.”

The bugs can be quite clumsy, flying haphazardly into pedestrians and windshields, said Heather Leach, an entomologist who studies spotted lanternflies at Pennsylvania State University.

Much about the pests remains unknown, Ms. Leach said, adding that their foray into urban areas is worrisome, in part because they will have more opportunities there to hitch rides to other states — as one did in 2018, when it traveled in a car from Pennsylvania to a mall in Albany, N.Y. On Monday, a bug believed to be a spotted lanternfly arrived by boat in Brooklyn, according to Customs and Border Protection, whose agricultural specialists were trying to “mitigate the pest threat,” a spokesman said.

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Leigh Anne Scarborough stopped to snap a photo of a lanternfly in central Philadelphia.Credit...Daniel Vasta for The New York Times

In Eastern Pennsylvania, the flies have already wreaked havoc in vineyards like those at the Manatawny Creek Winery in Berks County, where lanternflies have been gnawing away at the farm’s 10 acres of grapevines for two years.

“The volume of grapes has been reduced dramatically,” said Colleen Norheim, the winery’s tasting room manager. “I have a feeling they’ll never go away unless they get a true enemy that annihilates them.”

Scientists are looking for just such a nemesis. They have floated a plan to release tiny wasps from China that prey on the lanternflies, but more research is needed before that idea could be feasible.

In the meantime, Pennsylvanians will have to go on squashing the bugs one at a time, or else avoid them altogether.

Michelina Beaumont, a sophomore at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., said she was haunted by the thought of feeling the bugs’ bodies crush under her shoe, so she has been tiptoeing to class each day.

“My response is zigzagging across campus and not interacting with them,” Ms. Beaumont said. “They jump, they’re big, they’re scary. It’s like all of your worst nightmares coming to fruition.”

Officials in nearby states, including New York, Maryland and Connecticut, where the lanternfly has been found in smaller numbers, are hoping to avoid Pennsylvania’s predicament.

Virginia discovered an infestation last year in Frederick County and has been trying to eradicate it since then, using insecticides and herbicides. Elaine Lidholm, a spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, said the infestation had not spread.

“We’re trying very hard to keep it that way,” she said. “But, you know, the things can fly.”

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national news. He is from upstate New York and previously reported in Baltimore, Albany, and Isla Vista, Calif. More about Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Pennsylvanians Combat an Invasion With Their Feet. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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