Eagerly awaiting catalog season, I jumped the gun and immersed myself in the Plant Delights online catalog. While drooling over various things, I discovered that what I thought was Dahlia 'Bishop of Canterbury' was actually 'Bishop of Leicester.'
With all the rain we had, 2008 was a banner year for them. Earwigs like damp, they don't like drought. They also like Dahlias, Daylilies, Clematis,
Campanulas, and Coneflowers.
I put out traps made from dishwashing liquid and soy sauce, but there were so many that the traps didn't solve the problem.
(For maximum effect, imagine the following said in my fake old lady voice.) Course, when I was a young 'un, we didn't have no earwigs. Never heard of 'em, nor never even seen one! It was when I was living with my parents on the north end of Arlington Heights, in the mid-80s it was, when my sister started complaining about these bugs at her new house near downtown Arlington Heights. Pretty soon, they started showing up in my mom's garden. Ugly things they were, with roach like bodies ending in nasty pinchers. Heck, we didn't even have Japanese Beetles then.
Daggum globalization, that's what's done it! Don't even get me started on them infernal German hornets.
(I learned how to make my photos larger from this post on Robin's Nesting Place.)
*I'm one of those people who enjoys saying "aught." I envision myself when I'm old telling the children (or hopefully grandchildren) in an accent like the Pepperidge Farm guy, "I remember back in aught eight, the earwigs were so fierce they ate right through trees!"