We've been having a hell of a problem with stinkbugs getting into the house so I hung a bug zapper on the not well-enclosed porch. Unfortunately I used a decorative wall hook made out of cast metal. It was rated for far more weight than what ended up cracking it. I was vacuuming off the live stink bugs that had found the light but had not yet immolated themselves on the high voltage grid when it was "look out below!"
Although I had cleverly hot glue a clear plastic container to the bottom of the zapper when I put it on the porch, that merely concentrated the payload of stinkbugs and added a little spring to their dispersal when the zapper hit the ground. That's when I discovered just how many stinkbugs I had trapped (dozens) and how many of them were not fully cooked, but simply wandering around in the plastic container among their dead comrades, doing whatever stunned stinkbugs do.
I'm going to replace that hook (and all the others from that batch) with good, old fashioned steel hooks. Not as pretty but not as likely to spew me with a boatload of half-dead stinkbugs. I suspect I'll find a tiny void in the casting at a critical spot as is often the case with such failures but it's also possible there was too much torsion from the zapper.
Whatever the cause, it wouldn't have happened with a solid steel hook. Now I have to go around the house and replace all the other decorative hooks from that one 8-pack before they drop their loads, too.
To add insult to injury, the stinkbugs spewed mostly over the stairs, blocking my retreat. I grabbed my handy B&D vacuum which, as usual, had enough charge to start the job but not finish it. I've learned to treat handvacs as consumables. I went through the torture of removing and rebuilding a Hoover cordless vac only to have the incredibly cheaply designed motor bearings fail very shortly thereafter. Now when the pack dies, I either convert it to 12V car plug for use in the car or scrap it.
Today I will put the vacuum on the holiday lights timer, which also lives on the porch and is unemployed throughout most of the year. I believe I can set it to be on for just 15 minutes a day, and that should be enough to keep the vacuum charged but not overcharged. We'll see. I bought 3 of the same model B&D vacs on sale this year and two are on a "charge when needed" basis.
My experience with B&D is that their battery packs die from overcharging if left on charge too long - even in the ones that are alleged to have overcharging protection. Yet I keep buying them because the competition is not much better.
The question of the day is: "Are stinkbugs drawn to the smell of other stinkbugs?" It sure *seems* that way. It's very odd that there were almost no other bugs in the trap. It could be the stinkbugs were eating the other bugs. I suppose I can set up the critter cam to monitor the catch tray, assuming the fall hasn't killed the bug zapper. It went out, but that could just be the bulb coming loose from the socket.