The squash bug feeds largely on squash and pumpkins. It has a slender beak with needle-like mouth parts which are stuck into the plant for extracting the sap. It feeds only on plant sap. When it can not get squash or pumpkins it will feed on watermelons, muskmelons and related crops. It is very destructive to these crops. It not only extracts sap thus weakening the plant but it also seems to poison the plant while feeding. In this way its bite injures the plant something like the effects of the bed-bug's bite on our flesh. It feeds first on the leaves and vines often killing them in a few days. Later it may cluster and feed on the unripe squashes or pumpkins in such numbers as to completely cover them. Every country boy or girl has seen these stinking bugs on pumpkins in the corn field, at corn cutting time in the fall. [Illustration: Pumpkin in field covered with adults and nymphs of squash stink-bug.] The squash bug lives thru the winter as the matured winged insect. It flies from its food plant to winter quarters late in the fall. For winter protection it may enter buildings, hide under shingles on roofs, crawl into piles of lumber, under bark of dead trees or stumps or hide under any similar protection. When its chosen food crops begin to come up in the spring it leaves its winter home and flies in search of food. After feeding for a time the female lays patches of oval, flattened, gold-colored eggs set on edge. When first deposited the eggs have a pale color but in a short time the golden color appears. In some cases only three or four eggs may be found in one patch while again there may be twenty or thirty of them. They are so brightly colored that they can easily be seen and most boys and girls have seen them on the leaves of squashes or pumpkins. [Illustration: Cluster of golden-brown eggs of squash stink-bug showing two recently hatched nymphs.] In a few days after they are laid they hatch and out of each crawls a small, long-legged blackish or greenish young bug called the nymph. These little fellows usually stay in a crowd hiding on the under side of a leaf. After feeding for a time their leaf begins to turn yellow and soon dies. Then they move to a new leaf. As they feed they grow rapidly and after shedding their skins they change to the second nymph stage. This shedding of their skins or molting occurs five times before they mature. Of course each time before the old skin or suit of clothes is discarded a new one is developed beneath. The females may continue to deposit eggs for later clusters of young. They become most abundant on the crop late in the fall. Just before cold weather sets in the adults again seek winter shelter.