LINDEN, Va. -
You can swat them or sweep them, but you can't get away.
"There are millions of them," says Kernos Ball. "It's the worst thing I've ever seen in my life."
It's not what Ball imagined when he retired and moved out to the country. He wanted to be close to nature. Now, nature is a little too close.
"It's like bug stew," Ball says, showing us a bucket filled with stink bugs. "Pure bugs. You can take some home for dinner if you want."
No thanks. But seriously, Ball would love to get rid of them. Their real name is the brown marmorated stink bug. He just calls them "yucky."
Ball lives at the top of a mountain in Linden, Va. in Fauquier County.
"The whole neighborhood's covered," says Ball. "Everybody up here has got the same problem."
It is so bad that some days he has to change his clothes in the garage.
"When I'd go in the garage through the back door there, I'd have to take my clothes off because I was covered with them, shake them out of my clothes," Ball says.
It's like they are conspiring against him.
He is no longer using his front door in order to keep the bugs from coming in.
As you might imagine, Ball isn't doing much grilling these days in his backyard. On the other side of the patio, he really can't sit outside. If you check out the patio table umbrella, it's covered with stink bugs. In fact, you really can't do anything outside here without a stink bug landing on you.
He's found a spray he says kills about 20 percent of what he hits. He has done a pretty good job of keeping them out of the house. He checks every room each night.
When asked what he thought about his situation, he says, "I think somebody should do something about it. The government or the state or somebody. You can't live like this."
The USDA is searching for solutions.
In the meantime, this isn't what Ball had in mind when he put up that "Welcome Friends" sign.
"I hope they can't read," laughs Ball.
