Fly Away Home

Many, many years ago, when I read Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer for the first time, I noticed a little rhyme that ol’ Tom said to an insect.  “Ladybug, ladybug fly away home.  Your house is on fire and your children alone.”

I just wish it was that simple.

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My loyal readers have heard many times how much Annie and I love Sweetwater, our wonderful little cabin in the Arkansas Ozarks for many, many reasons.  For one thing, unlike our home in Piggott, Arkansas, or our previous home outside Malden, Missouri, Sweetwater is inhabited by very few biting flies, and even less mosquitoes.  Anybody who has lived in a place overrun with either kind of those evil bugs will immediately say, “Yup, heaven.”  However, as it turned out, it is not only heaven to us, but it is a heavenly home for something else.

Ladybugs, and not just any ladybugs, the Asian ladybug. 

The first year, when fall came and the weather cooled for the year, we had to find a way to warm the cabin.  Well, when we did, at the first sign of warmth, Asian ladybugs started crawling out of cracks and crevices by the THOUSANDS!

They would swarm over the ceiling and fly to the nearest source of light and heat.  Yup, the light bulbs in our ceiling fan.  Then they would drop down and fly to something they could land on, to cool off I guess.  Quite often that “something they could land on” was our food, or coffee cup, my computer, or anything else I was working on, or me!

Not only do they not add anything good to my coffee or food, they would often bite any human who rubbed them the wrong way (which includes rolling over on them at night).  Their bites aren’t all that bad, but they are not pleasant by any means.  Also, if you step on or smash them (there’s that rolling over again) they give off a quite unpleasant smell.  Again, not skunk bad, but definitely not pleasant.

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At this point, let me clarify something for those bug lovers out there, the ladybug is not actually a bug at all, but a beetle.  The proper name for it is the ladybird beetle.

The ladybug, uh, ladybird in Tom Sawyer was the ladybug (Sorry bug lovers, I’m sticking to the name Mark Twain and I were raised with.) that was historically native to the United States.  Nope, we were besieged by its evil twin, the Asian ladybug.

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According to www.earthsky.org, “Native to Asia, the ladybug (was) introduced into Europe and North America during the 20th Century as a form of chemical-free pest control.  I’m sure it seemed like a great idea at the time; Harmonia axyridis are voracious consumers of plant-plaguing aphids, and they’re darn cute by insect standards.  What could possibly go wrong?  Alas, as with many such introductions, the Asian ladybugs proved to be too much of a good thing, outcompeting equally adorable native ladybugs and then setting their (sights) on our fruit, including (gasp!) our wine grapes.  Clearly, they’re a menace.  But an impressive menace nonetheless.”

So they are not only bugging us at Sweetwater, they are taking over the domain of our good old harmless ladybug which was doing a fine job killing aphids before scientists thought they had found a better way.

So what could we do?  Well, one obvious answer is to spray them with pesticides, which we would like to avoid anywhere that our grandkids are going to be, like the cabin at Sweetwater.  So that‘s out.

One step I do plan to take will be when I remove the trim from the walls and ceiling in the living room.  We’ve noticed that the vast majority of the little crawlies seem to come out from under the corrugated tin that decorates the ceiling in that living room.  So, once I take off the trim, I will run a bead of silicone caulk where that tin meets the wall.  I really think that will make a big difference.

This past month I came up with an idea to take advantage of the bugs’ natural tendency to be attracted by heat and light.  I got an old desk lamp we had, and Annie supplied me with a disposable aluminum cooking pan with sides a couple inches tall.  I poured the pan about halfway full of water and added a few drops of dishwashing soap to break the surface tension so the critters would drown.  Then I placed the light so that it was hanging directly over the pan, and turned it on at night when all other sources of light were extinguished.

I tried it and it worked!

The most effective although slightly unpleasant method I’ve found is a good, old vacuum cleaner.  Seriously, I just vacuum the bugs up. 

The problem with this method is that the ceiling, where the bugs crawl en-masse, is about ten feet high at the peak.  I started out climbing on furniture or using a ladder to get the vacuum cleaner nozzle within reach of them.  Then I found a conveniently sized piece of PVC pipe that someone had discarded.  By conveniently sized, I mean it nested exactly with the vacuum hose.  Yeah.  I cut it to length with a slight angle on the end to make its use easier.

Voila!  Now I can stand on the floor and reach the bugs pretty much anywhere.

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In Tom Sawyer’s poem, the idea was that the ladybug would be so worried about her children who were alone in a burning house that she would fly away home.  If she did fly away Tom knew he himself was in for some good luck.

So, if you are holding off an invasion of Asian ladybugs, I suggest you try some of my methods.  I just hope you stop short of burning down ladybug’s home.

That would be bad luck for both of you.

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