LONE PINE, Calif. (AP) — The gas station’s ground was covered with the small winged bugs. Piles of carcasses, inches deep, sat swept to the sides.

On the road, they rained onto car windshields. They flew by the thousands toward even the smallest sources of light, and crept along windows and kitchen tables.

Such has been the skin-crawling reality for the past two months in the high-desert communities at the foot of the Sierra Nevada’s eastern slopes, where residents have seen an explosion of the black-and-red seed bug species Melacoryphus lateralis. MORE