Jennifer Forman Orth, our go-to expert for invasive species, reports that with falling temperatures, more residents can expect their homes to be invaded by these brown bugs that, when startled, smell up the joint.
In most cases, she writes, they're actually western conifer seed bugs, which showed up here in the 1990s and which, fortunately, are not messing with local ecosystems:
You can often find them resting on the sides of houses, on doors and on window screens, where they are hoping to find a way to sneak in.