This year’s cherry crop is in, but a good quarter of the fruit this year shriveled and rotted just as it began to ripen. Some of the cherries on the edge of this rot zone had tiny little holes in them, which were being exploited by opportunistic ants, gnats, and beetles, as well as providing the entry points for the rot.

Argentine ants and gnats don’t bore into healthy fruit, and there was no trace of any larvae that might account for the beetles being the culprit (the mature ones being far too large to make the holes). I had no idea what was causing those initial punctures, until I saw this bug I’d never encountered before:

I took a few pictures and a short video over to the very helpful senior scientist Steve Heydon at the Bohart Museum of Entomology and he had the answer for me almost instantly: the “leaffooted bug”, or Leptoglossus, most likely to be specificically either L. clypealis or L. occidentalis, which apparently has very wide tastes and has arrived in my yard (or, perhaps, is simply in larger numbers this year; when I worriedly told Mr. Heydon I’d never seen the pest before he just shrugged and said, “it’s around”).

Working at the University has its unique perks every so often. Now all I have to do is figure out how to keep the bastards out of the upcoming plum and apricot crops.