My daughter has been bringing me ladybugs. On her walk home from the school bus she passes a patch of lupine which is infested with aphids; it is, apparently, ladybug heaven. She watches the ladybugs awhile, she says, then catches one or two or five and then runs home, bursts through the door and deposits them on my laptop. They walk around. They crawl up my screen and then fall down. It's hard to type with a ladybug on the keys; so I log out.
Wednesday I watched a ladybug do this odd little dance on the letter C, up and down up and down, the way lizards will do, and suddenly I wondered if she were trying to lay eggs and I thought, a keyboard is not a safe place for eggs, so I brushed her away. Then yesterday, lo, Sasha did find ladybug eggs on the windowpane.
How do you know they're ladybug eggs, Sasha?
I just know, Mom.
Today she and I walked past the lupine and she showed me the many, many mating ladybugs, and on a leaf we found a pile of what looked like very small orange roe – exactly the same sort of small orange roe Sasha found on the windowpane. So she must be right. They must be ladybug eggs. O ye of little faith!
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Because I know this is in your head now: Sesame Street's Ladybug Picnic sketch.
1 comment:
I just really like that there's a site called ladybuglady.com.
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