Fly away home

 

October is now in full swing around Illinois.

There are brown cornfields, orange pumpkins and little red and black ladybugs everywhere.

I walked into my living room yesterday and the walls were alive . . .

With the fluttering of hundreds, maybe thousands of little fluttering ladybugs and big brown stink bugs.

The windows were closed. They seemed to be coming in through my second floor air conditioner and distributing themselves throughout the apartment.

I tried spraying surfaces with bug killer, but it didn't seem to bother them at all. They just spread out, crawling into lampshades and over pillows, clinging to the ceiling and cracks like little red and black bubbles coming out of an ever running bubble machine.

Finally, in spite of the cool air, I turned on the air conditioner and set it low enough so that it would run. That slowed them down enough that I could begin swiftering and vacuuming up bugs, but it didn't end them.

Last night I left a lamp burning in the living room to draw the bugs away from my bedroom and it worked pretty well. This morning there were piles of them all around the floor by the lamp, but there were also some on the ceilings and walls.

I called maintenance and they came to commiserate with me. I really did feel a little better. Misery does love company, but that was all they had for me. It seems when the farmers plow the fields around here it stirs up the ladybugs and people begin scooping them out of their homes until either they go away or a frost comes and kills them.

He made conversation and futile little attempts to repack the insulation inside my air conditioner, then advised me to vacuum and let him know how it worked. He even stopped by later to see how things were going. They are so conscientious around here.

It seems most of the swarm has moved on. I keep my vacuum out to get the last little hangers on, but there have probably only been fifteen or twenty ladybugs today and one stinkbug.

Ladybug, ladybug fly away home . . .