I sometimes see smashed spotted lanternflies on the outdoor track in a nearby park where I run. They make a gaudy mess, with the shambles of wings and the black spots and the bright-red fragments, like McDonald's Happy Meal toys tossed out a car window and wheel-crushed repeatedly.

"I had the nymphs all over my deck in April," the lady in the print blouse said. "I thought they were little spiders until I saw they had only six legs." She added that deer regularly come up a set of steps to get onto her deck to eat her potted plants.

Adult insects hold on to vehicle surfaces tenaciously. I think maybe because they have sticky feet.

Had it ridden here on the train? It might have.

The spotted lanternfly got to the pole and went up the inch or two at the top slowly, each pair of its legs at a time; then it walked a careful semicircle as it traversed the cap.