17 June 2015
They’re back!!!
Yellow poplar weevils (*the newspaper called them billbugs) are everywhere and they’re freaking people out. Are they dangerous? Are they ticks?
No. They’re harmless. They don’t even bite.
Read all about them in last year’s blog post: Invasion of the Billbugs
(photo by Kate St. John)
p.s. Ben Coulter and Monica Miller have identified this weevil as Odontopus calceatus, a.k.a. Yellow Poplar Weevil, not Curculio as I read in the newspaper last year. Don’t believe everything you read in the newspaper!
One of these landed on me the other day while I was walking (but I didn’t see it land on me). I saw it and went “ack! is that a tick?” Then it flew off, and I said “oh, right, they’re baaaack….” We were at a baseball game a couple of years ago, and tons of these things were flying around and landing on people. My brother was with us and he thought they were ticks. He was relieved to find out they were not.
It’s a bug — smush it.
Not this one. I flick it
Lots on my windows too. I find them rather comical. I would not smush either. I’d photograph. And if they want to munch my lawn a bit, I would only ask “French, Ranch or Italian?”