Ladybug, Ladybug, Fly Away Home (or just leave)

Here’s one of those deep and abiding questions that keeps burning a hole in my weary brain as I search for the answer. Are you ready for the challenge of the day? This is a biggie.

What do ladybugs (actually Asian lady beetles) eat in the middle of the winter – inside the HOUSE? How do these Spartan crusaders LIVE??

We still have some hardy orange creepy-crawlers skiddling around here and there… little hard-shelled, prehistoric buggies that evidently can live on not much more than thin air.

They don’t seem to congregate around the sink or potty…don’t they need to drink? And they stay up high on the walls rather than combing the floor for crumbs…don’t they need to eat?

I have a feeling if there was a nuclear holocaust everything on earth might die except the alligators and ladybugs. I occasionally decide to do battle and snarf up these ladybugs with my vacuum sweeper. But they seem totally oblivious to the tornado-effect as they’re sucked up through the dark funnel-cloud of air to be buried in dirt and rubble, as if it’s an everyday thing. (Maybe their ancestors originated in Kansas.)

After the sweeper is turned off they live quite comfortably in its collection bag full of offending dirt until eventually, when the time is right, they come marching backwards through the hose to re-enter the house. Such tenacity!

I may have said this before (I think so, back weeks ago when they were swarming), but I’ve learned the hard way to empty the contents of the bag after each use into a plastic Ziploc bag. They crawl around inside the bag for a little while but eventually suffocate that way, which provides me more than a little sadistic glee. Then I get to bury the plastic coffin full of crusty carcasses with other trash to be picked up for the landfill. Maybe in some future generation a scientist will discover my bags of bugs (plastic lasts forever, you know) and examine the contents. “AH! Prehistoric beetles! That, I’m sure, could shed a defining light on our current times.