Collected data from user postings on the Squishr app — an online tracker of self-posted lanternfly hits in Pa. — reveals a particularly ruthless Montgomery County hunter. Colin Deppen’s antenna was raised by the figures, leading him to report the performance for Spotlight PA.

The bug-tallying app was created in 2019 by an IT director from Villanova, Brad Line. His sons inspired it, believing that lanternfly remediation efforts could be boosted by adding a competitive, game-like edge to the hunts.

They were right.

Hundreds of users downloaded it and started stomping, photographing, and posting their bug-annihilation efforts.

Plymouth Meeting retiree Harriet Campbell was one.

“At one point [the lanternflies] were all over the windows and walls, like soldiers marching. …They were driving me crazy. And so, you know, I just started whacking them. And then it became sort of an OCD thing and a passion.”

Campbell also took a different approach to her hunts. She stood behind the bugs and pointed her swatter backward at their heads. That stance, she found, provided greater accuracy in whamming the colorful pests.

The front-to-back technique has also been scientifically vetted by a New Jersey teen as a best hunting practice.

Campbell reported 13,000 ex-lanternflies, felled by her stealth and flyswatter. The crushed critters filled several five-gallon buckets, enough to make her an all-time, top-three Squishr.

Whether her stealth moved the needle on the bugs’ numbers is debatable. Local lanternfly populations have been dropping throughout Pa., driven by factors that include predators (blue birds munch them happily) and flock migrations, as swarms travel the eastern seacoast.

More on Harriet Campbell and her Squishr app fame is at Spotlight PA.