That’s No Way To Treat A Lady
Ladybug! Ladybug!
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
And your children all gone.
All except one,
And that’s little Ann,
For she crept under
The frying pan.
I don’t think so.
WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING I staggered into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. After the initial shock wore off I noticed that there was a Ladybug clinging to the middle of the glass. At first I thought that I had grown a very colorful zit overnight. I realized that it was not a zit when it started to move across the mirror. My zits rarely do that.
It was 6:15 AM and I was standing there watching a Ladybug stroll across our bathroom mirror. My brain whirred and I asked myself, “How did this Ladybug get into the house?” I didn’t invite it. I’m pretty sure that Dawn didn’t either. Her normal response to finding a little critter like that is, “John, kill it!”
And I do.
That’s part of my job as Husband. It was there in our marriage vows right after all that “Sickness and health” business.
Because it was early and I was barefoot I did not drop the Ladybug to the floor and stomp on it. Instead I plucked it from the mirror and gave it an educational experience. I taught it to swim. One quick flush and the Ladybug was last seen doing the Australian crawl as it circled the bowl on its way to the Wabash River.
The Ladybug was gone, but that still didn’t answer my initial question: How did it get to the mirror in the first place? I had to resort to doing some early morning research.
While the tea was brewing, dripping, or whatever it does, I fired up the computer. Doesn’t everyone? I asked Google about Ladybugs and it told me this: “Ladybugs are attracted to the light colored houses that have a clear Southwestern sun exposure.” Our house is, as Dawn describes it, a color called “Baby Poop Yellow,” but the house next door is a very light, almost white, blue. So, why did this Ladybug come into our house? The Southwest exposure thing? That same neighbor’s house pretty much blocks that. All I can figure is that we got a color-blind Ladybug that lost its compass.
Google continued: “Ladybugs come in through small cracks around windows, doorways, and under clap boards.” That is how Google had it – “clap board” – two words instead of one. The only time that I have seen it that way has nothing to do with Ladybugs. A “clap board” is used in movie making – at the start of a scene. However, if you push those two words together like this: “clapboard” it all begins to make a little more sense.
“clapboard” is, to be brief, wood used in constructing a roof, for example. A roof?! And what did we just have done to our Baby Poop Yellow home recently?
A new Roof!! Question answered.
I suppose we should be grateful that we were not inundated with Ladybugs while the new roof was being put on the house. I hear that they travel in packs like polka-dotted wolves. I would not relish the experience of looking in the bathroom mirror and seeing hundreds of eyes looking back at me. My own two eyes are more than enough – at least until after my first coffee.
I just checked under the coffee pot. No Ladybugs.
Down the Hall on Your Left 