by Deb Longley

Created on: April 18, 2008

"Time passes slowly in the House of Mice and Ladybugs."

It was a little like a scene Isabel Allende might have created in one of her fanciful stories. A walk through the snow to a green house with a white door which opens to a cozy farmhouse. A long wooden table sits in the center of the large kitchen waiting for the next set of visitors, which turned out to be us. But it doesn't take long to notice the house is not empty, not by a long shot.

On every surface, clinging to every windowpane, on nearly every square foot of floor, there are ladybugs. Ladybugs. Not cockroaches, ants, silverfish, waterbugs, or any of those other creatures which fail to engender any romantic feelings in the average human being. No, these are ladybugs. Who doesn't love ladybugs? We came, it seems, to visit a houseful of ladybugs.

The occurrence of the word "ladybug" in the general family conversation increased seven hundred-fold, at least, during the week we became their guests. My two year-old became a ladybug expert. Imagine, if you will, that a house which contains such vast numbers of ladybugs as this one, would have at least two categories of ladybugs. The Living and the Dead. Because this was not a new occupation, the Dead outnumbered the Living by a fairly large margin. For the purpose of a two year-old's study of ladybugs, this was useful. She could examine them closely without the bother of a heart-stopping panic a live one could produce.

Though I never actually witnessed the moment of death for any of the ladybugs, it would have been hard to miss the unmistakable posture of a dead ladybug. Somehow, they manage to get themselves upside down and they extend their wings upward. The effect is that dead ladybugs look exactly like little orange sailboats with black lacy sails floating, in the case of those who went to the bathroom to die, on a sea-blue windowsill.

We also learned a little about the eating habits of ladybugs. For example, we were surprised to learn that ladybugs enjoy ripe bananas. Enjoy them so much in fact, that they are willing and able to bore a hole through the peel of the banana to get to the sweet mushy inside. So we learned from this that they are more intelligent than, say, Kevin Spacey.

But ladybugs were not our only roommates. The farmhouse, being a farmhouse, had some small, quick-moving mammals living between and inside its walls. Our friends who own the farmhouse charged us with a solemn mission which we took on in all sincerity: reduce the mouse population

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>