Tuesday, March 8, 2011

“Lady bug, lady bug,
Fly away home;
Your house is on fire
Your children will burn.”


Like most nursery rhymes, that one is designed to scare children into submission. Yet, the ladybug is beloved, almost unnaturally so. It appears on clothing, décor, and jewelry. It must be  the polka dots; no one gets all dewy-eyed about a stinkbug, and they'e really just Amish ladybugs.

Soon enough we learned the difference between those ladybugs of yore, and their kissin’ cousin, the Asian beetle, the one with the white M on its forehead. In town we saw one or two, said, “huh,” and went about our lives. Out in the country, Asian beetles begin to erode your mental health. Whoever placed them in the genus, Harmonia, didn't spend much time in their presence.





Asian beetles have three unattractive qualities. For a tiny bug, their bite is surprisingly harsh. It makes you holler. You not only want to squash the bug, you  want to dismember it and flush it down the drain. Even then you can't be sure it's gone. 
We can all be happy that a shark does not have a proportionately severe bite.


Second, Asian beetles make you pay when you dispatch them. They stink! When one crawls up your neck in the middle of the night, you instinctively smash it. And you will regret that, because Asian beetles posthumously emit a nasty aroma.


But in the end it’s the sheer numbers of beetles that will defeat you. They get in your house, in your clothes, and in your hair. In the evening I hear them plop into my tea. That’s if I’m lucky; usually I take a nice big gulp without checking and wash several down.

How many beetles is too many? We used to think a couple of dustpans-full a day was a lot. Then we had to remove the siding on the south side of the house to do some repairs. Asian beetles seek the warmth on the south side with a vengeance, and when the siding came off, the wall of silver insulation underneath was black. It was a solid wall of beetles.

Seeing that our house was literally encased by Asian beetles was a good thing; it led to acceptance. That’s when we knew we were not even in the game against these guys.


For more information on Asian beetles:
http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef416.asp