Ladybug, Ladybug

It was a Ladybug infestation. They were ever ywhere — crawling all over the inside of the window panes and curtains, falling onto the carpet, and moving along the ceiling in my mother’s bedroom. My mother lay on her bed waking from a nap, watching them move along her ceiling. “I’ve always liked Ladybugs,” she said. “But I don’t like them in the house. I wonder why they decided to come inside … ” I shrugged my shoulders.

“This happened at work one time,” I said. “I went into the office one day and hundreds of Ladybugs had descended into my office. They were crawling up the walls and trapped in the fluorescent light fixture above my desk. It was weird.”

I got a stool and started scooping them from Mom’s ceiling and into my hand. A few minutes later, I had accumulated 38 of the little red and black polka dotted beetles. Some were dead, but most of them were still alive and trying to escape from the cup of my hand. I rushed to the front door and threw them outside.

“Be free!” I said as I flung them out the door and into the yard. Like my mother, I, too, have always loved little red Ladybugs. When I was growing up in Middle Georgia, walking the rows of my parents’ backyard garden in my bare feet, I remember seeing so many Ladybugs. They were common and easy to identify due to their bold coloring. I often picked them off of plants and let them scurry along my palm as I admired them and repeated a rhyme I learned when I was four or five.

Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly away home. Your house is on fire, And your children are gone.

Now that I’m an adult, I wonder exactly what that rhyme means. It sounds dark and sad. Though I remember seeing many beetles as a child, like honey bees, I don’t see many in my garden these days, and that’s concerning to me. Nature is a delicate, balanced wonder, and the disappearance of certain insects or animals signals that the balance of nature is off somehow — that we are all in trouble. Ladybugs are good insects — the kind you want to see crawling up your vegetable plants. They help control aphids, mites and scale, and they do it without having to dust your plants with pesticides. One Ladybug can eat up to 50 aphids in a day and 5,000 insects in its lifetime. To summarize, you want them patrolling your plants because their predatory nature makes them an asset in the garden.

Mother Nature made them bright red for a reason. Their colorful markings are designed to scare away predators — birds, frogs, wasps, spiders and dragonflies. In the natural world, animals and insects are hesitant to eat red creatures.

After seeing them march uninvited into my mother’s house outside of Lyons, I was curious as to what prompted them to break in like burglars — climbing into her window like thieves in the night. I found the answer online.

When the weather turns cold, Ladybugs look for warm, dry places to ride out the winter weeks. These Ladybug colonies can contain thousands of the red beetles. I guess Mom was lucky that she only had to contend with a few dozen.

As for their name, Ladybugs were named by European farmers who prayed to the Virgin Mary for protection against invading insects that damaged their crops. They prayed and then miraculously, Ladybugs appeared and ate the harmful insects. Believing that the Ladybugs had been sent by the divine, they referred to them as the “beetle of Our Lady.” Through the years, they be-

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came known as Lady Beetles and here in the South, we call them Ladybugs.

If you are superstitious like my Grandmother Maggie Mae Lanier of Metter was, you may believe that seeing a Ladybug is good luck or that killing one is bad luck. I’m not superstitious, but I don’t kill the Ladybugs I encounter. I welcome them with open arms. You should, too, unless they get in your house, and if they do, show them the door, but please, don’t kill them.