Woodcliff Lake’s Luxury, Lushness, and Watery Ways

Stubborn Stingers and Thriving Flies

Woodcliff Lake is home to a variety of flying fiends, food thieves, and cringe-worthy crawlies. 

Wasps look similar to bees, but they’re longer and shinier and have narrower waists. Unlike bees, they’re not important pollinators, and they aren’t one-and-done stingers; they can attack until they decide to stop. They also adopt a mob mentality and get by with a little help from their friends; when threatened, they release pheromones that signal other wasps to come join their sting ring.  

Pantry moths don’t sting or bite; instead, they’re food nuisances that people often bring into their homes directly from the grocery store. They’re found in pet food, rice, noodles, crackers, flour, and cereal, and larvae can develop into infestations within a few weeks. Their eggs are extremely small and difficult to notice, so people sometimes ingest them without realizing it. Even full-grown pantry moths aren’t exactly booming butterflies; miller moths are roughly three times larger than pantry moths, and butterflies are several times larger. 

Fruit flies are food nuisances as well, but prefer fruits and vegetables over dried goods; they favor bananas, peaches, melons, tomatoes, and onions. Like pantry moths, they enjoy a market-to-kitchen pipeline and are brought in with groceries. Once inside, they prefer drains and garbage disposals to pantry shelves. They’re more common in the Woodcliff Lake summers, partly because they reproduce more readily when the weather warms. 

Ladybugs are a type of beetle and some, like the Asian Lady Beetle, aren’t all that ladylike; they release a foul-smelling odor when disturbed and can eat around 40 aphids a day (or more when food is abundant). They can also bite people, although this isn’t harmful, venomous, or especially painful (it rarely breaks the skin). Asian Lady Beetles look A LOT like their ladybug cousins and tend to flourish in summer, but they don’t die off in winter; instead, they invade homes and hide within the walls, biding their time until the temperatures rise.