I don't know what it's like around your home or workplace, but if yours are anything like mine, you've got lots of boxelder bugs hanging around, inside and out, at this time of year.

They're hanging around my house like a busload of relatives, and the supply of boxelder bugs here at the radio station could be easily described as plentiful (like the one I found doing the breast-stroke in my coffee this morning, and the roughly 200 or so that are making a home in our light fixtures).

Wow. You've got lots of questions (although, I guess I'm the one with questions, since I wrote that), so let's get to some of the pertinent answers: