There are a lot of organic insect repellents/killers to chose from. A good full service garden center will have a larger selection of organic insecticides than the box stores and good garden centers have competitive prices. One natural product that comes to mind is diatomaceous earth; made of ground seashells, I believe. It's a white powder, a little messy to apply, but it works especially well for earwigs. It kills the little evil things as they crawl over it on the ground around your plant! I had lots of trouble with earwigs destroying my clematis. I hate those ugly things! Diatomaceous earth is the main ingredient found under many names, so ask at your store. It also works for slugs and snails as well. Buy a larger quantity and and you'll have it a long time. A good organic concentrate will kill the little buggers also, but ask; not all insecticides will kill every bug. Good luck.

It could have been a praying mantis - they lie in wait on nectar plants for non-suspecting butterflies, but I don't know how they go about eating them, since I rescued the one I found in the clutches of a PM. You're describing a weird situation. I guess it's most likely some type of bird eating them. I've seen birds, specifically cardinals, take crickets and grasshoppers, and discard the legs and hard shell, leaving only the inner body, then take this to the nest. But I've lived in the country for 17 years, and I've never seen wings scattered around, so I know my local birds don't do it. I have to ask, is there some mentally ill person living nearby? 'So sorry! Sherry

Yes, I'm going to try that. It's just damp newspapers rolled up and left about the garden near where you find them. Then you collect them in the morning and they should be in there and you throw them away. Supposedly they enjoy part shade and lots of mulch, which I have a lot of. Sunny exposed gardens have fewer earwigs. Your garden seems a bit like mine in that regard, Terrene, part sun and mulched. I've had a couple of years with a ton of earwigs eating everything. This year is not as bad for some reason. I did look them up last night and evidently mid June is when you would expect to first start seeing them. They are a little early like everything else this year.

I have a PestServ discussion about the skeletonized leaves we are all experiencing, can't seem to locate it now, might have deleted. Nonetheless, our BB has a combination of earwigs, leafhoppers, planthoppers and several small crickets (!) engorging themselves on the leaves. My Monarda are experiencing the same fate, as are several other ornamentals. Never-ending battle for us this year. Dan