Ladybug Ladybug Fly Away Home

After a stint of extreme hoeing yesterday I heard the boys squealing with excitement about something by some trees. I dashed over there to find them pointing at a little red ladybug with no black spots. It sounds like I'm having a mushy mom moment, but one of the great things about kids is the joy they can find in something that adults consider mundane.

We watched the little ladybug crawling on some weeds.

We watched him very closely.

And then managed to convince him to crawl on Aidan's arm and then watched him fly away.

Of course, having a ladybug fly away led me to the nursery rhyme about ladybugs, which you should know are called ladybirds in England (and lady beetles elsewhere).

Ladybug ladybug fly away home,
Your house is on fire and your children are gone.

Then it led to the fun questions of why is their house on fire, where did their children go, what does their house look like? So I looked into it and found out that back in the "olden days" farmers knew of the ladybug's value in reducing the level of pests in their crops and it was traditional for them to cry out the rhyme before they burnt their fields following harvests (this reduced the level of insects and pests) in deference to the helpful ladybug.

There are also some stories about it being related to Catholic priests being burned at the stake for not swinging the way of the Protestants. That was a bit much, so we left it with the farmers burning crops version. We'll leave burning at the stake for another time.

They say the name ladybug came during the Middle Ages when swarms of pests were destroying crops, so farmers prayed to the Virgin Mary for help.  Soon after, ladybugs came and ate the bad pests and saved the crops.  The farmers called these bugs, "Beetles of Our Lady" and they eventually became known as "ladybugs, ladybeetles or ladybirds," depending on where you live. I'm always amused by these stories and wonder how true they are.

On to some quick ladybug education for the kids. Since they're into it, I thought we'd run with it and slip in some learning while they weren't looking:

Enchaned Learning's Ladybug Page - This site has a ton of ladybug crafts and learning sheets. You have to subscribe for some of them and others are free. It's worth having a dig around if you're doing any ladybug learning.

Ladybug Lore - That makes me giggle. I love the smell of lore in the morning. Great site though including how to say Ladybug in a lot of other languages.

DLTK's ladybug crafts - Tons of free ladybug kid crafts from one of my favorite kid-crafting sites.

Release the Hounds…er…ladybugs

Did you ever have one of those experiences in life where you anticipated an event, but when the actual event came around it turned out completely opposite from what you anticipated? Yeah, that was me tonight. We have recently had some new plants sprouting in the garden and I was so afraid that whatever killed our squash and zucchini and has severely injured our watermelon and cantaloupe will want to dig in to our newly-sprouting leaves. I decided that releasing the ladybugs had to be done right away to save the garden. The time for the garden assassins had come. It was now or never.

I suppose when I bought the ladybugs I had visions of this being quite a romantic experience. I imagined myself at sunset sort of waltzing through the garden like a pixie spreading a bag of quaint little red and black spotted ladybugs all over the plants. I was actually looking forward to it. The reality of it was so so different. Oh my God, it was different.

I took the ladybugs out of the fridge to awaken them just after dinner, as I was instructed by the nursery. Even though they looked dead, they all did indeed start crawling around their mesh bag after about 30 minutes of warm air. I was also told to put them in the garden after I water it because they'll be thirsty. I remembered this at about 8:30 pm so I dashed outside and turned on the sprinkler. I came inside to do dishes and then got ready to go outside and release them at 9 pm.

Let me paint a picture for you. I've got a bag of 1,800 crawling ladybugs, a large camera, the baby monitor, the phone, some child-safe scissors (all I could find), a chip clip (that I pulled off the BBQ chips to re-seal the ladybug bag) and a Coleman battery-operated lantern that I pilfered from our hurricane supplies. I went outside and the minute I hit the dark I was inundated with about 9 million tiny, biting, buzzing, flying insects who were attracted to the stupid lantern. I went to the middle of the garden and plonked down the lantern and attempted to cut open the top of the bag of ladybugs. I had been told that for the best effect I should sprinkle about 1/4 of the bag out each evening for 4 days, so I knew I needed the chip clip to reseal the bag and bring the remaining 3/4 ladybugs back inside.

First of all, I couldn't cut the plastic mesh bag with the Crayola kid-safe scissors, so I had to rip it. When I ripped open the bag I got to relive a scene from The Mummy. About 900 of the 1,800 ladybugs decided to make a beeline up my arm. I just peered down and saw all these little dark colored beetles swarming up my arm and I assure you that in the dark they did not look like the cute little red and black ladybugs you're imagining. I started shaking my arm madly and hopping around trying to knock them all off. I dropped the bag of remaining bugs somewhere near the tomato plants and danced over to the watermelons hopping and squealing and trying to dislodge several hundred of them from my elbow. Let's not forget the 9 million tiny, biting, buzzing, flying insects that are still attracted to the lantern and my legs. I got most of the ladybugs off and went back to the bag.

At this point I had already decided that this would be a one-time event where 100% of these little buggers were going to be released and I was not going through this again. I grabbed the bag and took out their "nest" and put it under a tomato plant and then ran around the garden again trying to shake the few hundred stragglers from the bag. I know I ate at least one. There are at least 10 still in my shirt as I'm typing this and I have at least 25 bites from the mystery lantern bugs. A moth the size of a hummingbird got caught in my hair causing me to shriek like a banshee, which then caused the dog to start barking at my insanity like he wanted to kill me. I tossed down the bag, the scissors, and the chip clip somewhere near the basil, snapped a few photos and called it a night.