Chafer beetle wreaks havoc on Rochester back yard

Mandy and Bob Harrison survey the chafer beetle damage in the back yard of their Rochester Avenue home.

image credit: SARAH PAYNE/THE TRI-CITY NEWS

Bob Harrison and his wife, Mandy, have lived in their Rochester Avenue home for 30 years, having fallen in love with the view that stretches all the way to the Fraser River, the flat, expansive back yard and the creek flowing beside the house.

Never in those 30 years did they expect to be dealing with a pest the likes of the chafer beetle.

In the past few months the Harrisons have watched their carefully tended lawn turn into an apocalyptic battle scene the crows pecking away at great chunks of grass, turning it into bubbled balls of turf, and the raccoons laying waste to entire swaths, nosing the sod up and rolling it back with nary a root in sight.

"We had a beautiful lawn here for years and years," Harrison said, shaking his head as he surveyed the damage in his back yard.

And after months of trying to battle the chafer beast, Harrison is throwing up his hands in defeat.

"What do we do with this? It's totally ruined," he said of the more than 6,000 sq. ft. yard.

The couple's grandson did a bit of online research for them and came up with coyote urine as a possible antidote, so Harrison picked up a small bottle from an outdoors store in Bellingham. He sprinkled some on a test patch of grass and tied a urine-soaked rag to a stake that he set out in another area.

"That night the raccoons came back, sniffed around it didn't bother them at all," Harrison said. "The next night the crows came back as well."

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Chafer beetle wreaks havoc on Rochester back yard