Mom says the annual ladybug infestation has begun in earnest. She’s been finding hundreds of them in the basement on the windowsills, in clumps, dead or dying or just plain giving up. She said at first she’d salvage the living ones and put them on her plants to eat the aphids. But they’d defect and end up on the sills again. Eventually they’d end up in the belly of her vacuum cleaner.
I got really excited when she told me this because I imagined the great photo a teeming mass of ladybugs might make, but when I went to investigate, I found just a few scattered throughout the basement. It’s for the best, probably. When’s the last time I actually voluntarily hung out around a pulsing clump of insects?
The ladybugs have attacked my mother’s house too, and she used to be nice and try to transfer them to a place less offensive than, say, her soup, her book, etc. etc. However, now not only is she completely unsympathetic to them, she’s gone INSANE trying to get rid of them. She’s been scooting around the house with a piece of duck tape, collecting them and throwing them in the fire. The steely determination in her eyes is a little creepy.
I have to know…is this bug dead or alive?
I absolutely love all of your photos! I’ve always been fascinated with ladybugs…although I’m not sure I would want an infestation of them :)