AT HOME WITH KAYLA PRICE 10/28: Walking sticks

Walking Sticks

Recently, I have seen walking sticks (Phasmatodea is their proper name) all around my house.  These are the long, thin bugs that look like pieces of sticks with legs.

I had never seen one until probably ten years ago.  I remember showing it to my husband, and he told me they are called walking sticks.  Since then, I have seen one or two every now and then.

Last week I started seeing them everywhere around the house…except the inside, thankfully.  When I came home one day, I stopped in amazement to see one that was probably 8 or 10 inches long walking along the fence.  I tried to get a good photo, but she tended to blend in.

The next day I saw one at the front of the house on top of a bush in the flower bed.  He was only 3 or 4 inches long.

When we had the freeze last week, I was about to cover a faucet in the corner of a flower bed, but there was a walking stick hanging off the soffit above.  I decided that faucet was probably protected from the cold by the bushes.  I was not about to have that bug fall on me!

A walking stick which crawled over a security camera made the camera think it was a person.  How funny to look and see that it was really just a bug!

A few days later a walking stick was on the side light of the door; how cute.  Until he decided to hang from the door frame overhead.  I couldn’t go in or out the front door!

This is when I needed to research if walking sticks bite (thankfully no, they are herbivores), but the one on the door had pinchers on its tail!  I learned this signifies that it is a male.

And tonight, as I walked around the house, I noticed yet another one on a window.  This one seemed to have befriended a grasshopper, or else the grasshopper wondered if he could eat him!

I have lived through multiple cricket invasions, a black beetle invasion, and now what seems to be the beginning of a walking stick invasion!  Although they are a bit creepy looking, I think they might not be so bad!  At least they don’t fly or dive bomb you.