They are back, and they are everywhere. They fly, they smell and they just won’t leave. Stinkbugs have found their way into homes across Potomac and anywhere else they can get their little legs on, aggravating students and wreaking havoc on their daily lives.
Stinkbugs have penetrated their way through cracks in the walls and windows and doors left open.  According to a Sept. 24 Washington Post article, the number of stinkbugs increases as the days get shorter and the nights get colder.
“They are near windows and lights,” junior Naomi Gutkind said. “When they are in my house they always run into walls and buzz.”
Once stinkbugs are killed, they project an odor that can make the surrounding environment smell.
According to entomologist Michael Raupp, a professor at the University of Maryland who shared information on a Washington Post discussion online, this smell comes from stink glands in their abdomen when they feel threatened by a predator.
“I don’t feel bad killing them at all,” Gutkind said. “It’s just when you kill them, they smell bad.

They are not supposed to live in [Maryland,] so they have no natural predators here, [so] someone [has to] kill them.”
According to Raupp, most of their predators cannot seem to keep up with their ability to increase in quantity so rapidly. 
The increase of bugs is something that surprises students as well. According to junior Laura Amortegui, she sees up to 25 stinkbugs a day in her house.
“[They are] usually in the basement near the door to the yard,” Amortegui said. “Sometimes while cleaning out my bag there will be one or two.”
Students kill stinkbugs in different ways ranging from swatting them to stepping on them to vacuuming them up to grabbing them and flushing them down the toilet.
However, not everyone considers stinkbugs nuisances. For some, they are simply insects, not irritating pests.
 “They are just insects that fly,” junior Cristian Salgado said. “They don’t do anything bad.” 
According to Raupp, the stinkbugs will return every year, possibly not in such high numbers but they will certainly always be here.