LADYBUG, FLY AWAY HOME

Children used to chant a poem that went, “Ladybug, Ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children will burn.” Compassionate parents later changed the ending to “your children are gone.” Whichever sounds best, we are in the midst of a major ladybug infestation and must get them to fly away home.

First, a few questions about these tiny red visitors with the black spots:

Why now? Why do they dot the windows all of a sudden? They crept in last fall after the first cold snap, says Kathy Murray, a Maine Department of Agriculture entomologist. The warm spring sun on the windows attracts them.

Are they good or bad? Farmers love them because they feast on aphids, the tiny bugs that came from Asia in the 1990s, supposedly brought in on imported shrubs. Aphids can ruin a soybean or potato crop by sucking the nutriment from the leaves. Children find ladybugs cute. But allergists say they can cause almost as much sneezing and wheezing as cats and cockroaches.

Where did the ladybugs come from? Minnesota Public Radio explained in 2003 that farmers in the South brought them in to destroy the aphids that were sucking the life out of their pecan trees. That didn’t work, but when the ladybugs found the soybean aphids in the Midwest, the ladybug population exploded and has spread through half the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture introduced them in Maine in the 1970s to protect the potato crop against aphids.

What’s to be done with them? Children sometimes carefully gather them up and turn them loose outside. Many folks go after them with a vacuum cleaner, but they may find that their bodies exude a putrid smell when disturbed, probably originally a protective device against birds. Ms. Murray suggests using a vacuum with a high efficient particulate air filter to keep the bugs and the smell in the bag. She adds that it might be wise to stuff a sock into the cleaner hose to catch any bugs that may try to escape. She says if you are allergic to them it may be better just to sweep them up and put them outside.

Cute and beneficial as they are, the ladybugs can be a nuisance in the house. But at least they don’t bite like the black flies that are due here soon.