The Lady Bug Rescue Society (Dateline April, 2004)

The Lady Bug Rescue Society is now in session. Members roll call: Mom? “Present!” Alexandra? “Present!” This meeting is called to order!

“Mom! I got another ladybug!! Can we put it outside?”

“Ok. You walk slow so it doesn’t fall off and I will blow it off your hand when we get the door open”.

Whhhhoooooooossssshhhh…..…..

Ever seen a ladybug? Of course you have. Ever seen three ladybugs all in one place? Sure you have. Ever seen 5,000,000 ladybugs all in one place? No?? Are you sure??? Then you don’t live anywhere near my house.

Seems the “Lady Bugs” we are afflicted with in Northern Michigan might not be ladybugs after all. I hear they are part of a communist plot on the part of Mother Nature to mislead adoptive parents everywhere into dropping everything they are doing in order to “save the life of a ladybug”. I hear they are really another type of Chinese beetle masquerading as Lady Bugs to get on my good side.

Now, I have no idea what ladybugs eat or how they survive the long, bitter cold winters in Northern Michigan, much less how they survive in my glassed-in porch. I have no idea why, on every even remotely “warm” days in January, they come to life in groups of 13 or more and crawl up curtains, bathroom sinks, French windows, or walls. I just know they do. I’ve seen it. It’s eerie watching a group of marauding ladybugs take over a freezing cold room in January and pretending they like it.

My daughter has a thing for ladybugs. Which means I have a thing for ladybugs (it’s part of the mommy job description, you know). Don’t get me wrong – I like ladybugs, in groups of three or less. However, 15 bugs bent on freedom every five minutes really taxes my patience. It goes something like this:

“Mom, I found another one, and this one is alive”

“How do you know?”

“Because she isn’t squished!”

“Oh…well bring her over and we will release her out the back door”.

“Mom, I found another one…

“Ok, met me at the back door.”

“Mom…”

“Door!”

“Mo…”

“NO!”

Now, I have to admit when left to my own devices (especially at 5 a.m. in the morning when I am up and the kids are still asleep) that if I find a ladybug I will do the “one hand waving out the back door” thing to get the bug outside – hopefully back to her babies (as my daughter tells me). But when the sun swings around the earth and spring comes to Northern Michigan, the bugs come out in groups of 50 or more. This is a greatreason to vacuum the back sunroom, much to my daughters horror. “That one was alive!” “How do you know?” “Because it was still crawling!!!” “Oh, sorry…”

So here’s the dilemma. In Michigan, we have two seasons – cold and less cold. The cold season lasts from October to May. The less cold season (some might even use the word “warm”) lasts for 15 hrs on 3 August. The rest of the time it’s either raining, blowing, howling, storming or just plain nasty outside (probably because we live on the highest point in the county and there are no trees.) So if I release the ladybug outside in snowy weather to get her “back to her babies”, then she freezes. If I leave her inside she multiplies into 15 other bugs in about 8 minutes. If I move her to the windowsill in the kitchen and hide her behind all the kid’s crafts, found items, and finger-paint pictures then I can pretend there must be bug food back there somewhere and she can live out her buggy life in relative safety from the vacumn cleaner.

So – it’s a toss up – outside or not outside…that is the question. Whether tis better to endure the trials and tribulations of being picked up and plopped down in a safe place or better to fly away outside (gale force winds be damned!) in the hopes the “ladybug” finds her babies.

So how do I explain all this to my daughter? I’m the person that I made her leave a ladybug at the beach last summer (“but she’s my best friend!”) because I told her that she didn’t want to take the mommy ladybug away from her babies. How and why she remembers this so intently is beyond me (so much for lying to my child).

Ah, childhood. Will it never end???

This meeting of the “Lady Bug Rescue Society” is now concluded. Carry on.