Escaping from the Asian Lady Beetles

It happens every year: Once the farmers have harvested all the soybeans in the fields, the bugs who lived in those fields start looking for a warm place to spend the winter. Those spots on the outside of my window? Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles. They are not the ladybugs I used to read about in Mother Goose (fly away home); these pests were imported by our government to help control aphids.

Have a closer look. For a really close look, click on the picture. If you smash these little creatures, they have an unpleasant odor; they've been known to bite, too.

They look for cracks and crevices around windows and doors where they can sneak inside. They want to live with me! At the old house, many of them did get in, and in spring it seems I spent half my time vacuuming up ladybugs. We'll see how many of them make it inside this trailer house. It's much better insulated, with no drafts at all. So far the only ones I've seen inside sneaked in when we opened the door. By the way, there's no extermination method for them, which you'll see if you go to this USDA site and scroll down to "prevention and control".

Anyhow, I needed to get away from the lady beetles for awhile, so Sadie and I went to the cabin. The bugs don't like shade, so there are very few of them in the woods. I started a fire and read from a book called "Poems For A Good and Simple Life". With no distractions, I could ponder the meaning of each line.



We stayed for a couple of hours before the evening chill got the best of us.


Amazing how something written in the 1600's can apply so well to today.


I love this. So short, so simple, so true.