Ladybugs and Nursery Rhymes

Did you know that ladybugs are not always red with black dots? There are some that are peach-colored and even some that are a dark orange with dots. These cute little garden helpers’ scientific family name is coccinellidae and they are from the beetle family. (No, this is not my new PhD major, nor has it been an interest in the past.) Did you also know that ladybugs love the sunlight? Think about when you see them most often: for me, it’s usually outside on a sunny day, and they’re buzzing around some flowers or other greenery hoping to land on someone’s finger as to give them some luck. I wonder if I’m in need of luck lately. Thinking back on my life, I’ve been pretty fortunate. I wouldn’t say “lucky” as much as…well….privileged. So in my privileged life, I wouldn’t think I needed “luck.” Apparently the universe thinks differently about the luck that should be coming my way…

I’m not sure if you are aware of this fun fact either, but did you know that ladybugs have recently become a “hassle” in north Georgia due to some overpopulating when scientists were using them to get rid of some other annoyance in nature? (Are you putting this together yet? Are my subtle hints helping you to infer as to my amazingly absurd story that I’m slowly but surely letting unfold?) I left my house at 7:00 a.m. and everything was normal. Nice day outside, temperature resting around 48 degrees in the early morning, expecting it to climb to the low 80s, the sun was shining behind a few lazy clouds pouting around the sky looking for some company. All was good in the land of OZ. At 4:00p.m. I strolled back in my door, greeted my kitty cat, took her out for a stroll in the mini-yard, and decided I would work upstairs in her room so she could play with her toys while mommy got some grading finished. (I’m not making all that up for this essay. I have become THAT cat person.) I was sitting on the daybed watching my kitty cat pounce around her room playfully while my laptop was warming up and I heard a buzzing sound. Thinking it was a poor little fly that Phoebe had been chasing around the house for a few days and feeling sorry for it, I glanced up toward the top of the window and there they were. Yes, them. Not IT, THEM. About fifty or sixty of them. Sitting. Waiting. For what, I have no idea…something green to chew on? My head? My cat? In the midst of my double-take and my, “WHAT THE….” I realized that they were not only covering my ceiling like a cute little Phi Mu blanket (our sorority thing was a ladybug, I think), they were all over both windows, on the fan, and bizarrely enough, even on the fan string. This is absurd, right?

I mean, it’s almost as absurd as some freak driving across town to her friend’s house for dinner with her cat in the car freaking out, salivating so much while she’s meowing that its sounds like she’s meowing under water while the driver is happily singing along to “Abracadabra” from the 80s to try and calm the feline into submission. Oh, wait, I just did that, so I guess 78 ladybugs in one room of someone’s house resting comfortably on her ceiling, all over the windows, and on the freaking fan string isn’t too bizarre.

What does one do, you ask, when ladybugs have invaded your house? According to June from American Pest Control, nothing. “Yeah, they’re quite the problem, ain’t they?” June said with a smile in her voice when I called saying, “This may sound really weird to you, but I have ladybugs all over my guest room and don’t really know what to do.” And apparently, it’s NOT the weirdest thing people have ever heard here in Athens, GA because it’s so “common.” WHAT? Common? I mean, come on. I’ve heard of spiders or roaches. Hell, in Colorado I had those earwig things and they were Crreeeeepy….but ladybugs? Give me a BREAK! And what am I supposed to do with them? Well, June says to tape up my windows with clear tape, lower the blinds to make it dark because they…you guessed it…love the light (hence me remembering seeing them on sunny, beautiful days), and “Jus’ leave ‘em be if you want. I mean, they ain’t dirty er nothin’ and they ain’t gonna do anybody no harm, so if yer OK with ‘em, jus’ leave ‘em.”

“Yes,” I jokingly replied, “they are good luck, so maybe I shouldn’t bother them. Ha, ha, ha…”

“Thas’ what I do.” June replied in the most serious and professional voice she had. “I don’t wanna mess with ‘em cuz they are good luck. I’d jus’ leave ‘em.”

Right, June. I’m on it. I’ll just let the little ladies hang out in my guest room and have babies. Hell, invite your friends over. Mi casa y su casa my little friends. WHATEVER lady!

“Um, do you have a suggestion for me to get rid of them if I don’t want to let them…hang….out….in my house?”

So there I was ten minutes later. In my guest room with the vacuum cleaner hose, standing on the bed holding the vacuum in one hand and reaching up to the ceiling with the hose in the other, sucking up these harmless good-luck symbols while pleading with them to forgive me. What a sight. Talk about all your luck going down the “tubes”….OK, that was bad…

Those little buggers are hard to suck up, too. They hang on like there’s no tomorrow. Maybe as we all should live our lives….like there’s no tomorrow…..or we’ll all get sucked up by a vacuum hose…..Oh, and about fifteen minutes later when I went back in there to get Phoebe’s travel kit for our field trip, there were about twenty more…on the ceiling….a few on the window….one or two on the fan string…..

This is really fun. No really. It’s great. I love the north Georgia weather and all its inhabitants. Times like these remind me of poetry. So I’ll leave you with this little ditty from our nursery rhyme pasts:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home

Your house is on fire and your children are gone
All except one, and that's Little Anne
For she has crept under the warming pan.