By Stephanie Abbajay

Is there a less menacing creature than the ladybug? Little, round, red with black spots, they are adorable. Unless, of course, there are 10,000 of them swarming over your doors and flinging themselves against your windows.

I don’t know what it’s like in your neck of the county, but out here in Dow we are positively inundated with ladybugs. No, inundated doesn’t quite capture it. We are overwhelmed and under siege. They have us surrounded.

My house is under constant attack, and it seems to get worse every day. They have swarmed the windows and porches. We have been dive bombed and driven indoors by the sheer volume of them. Experts say the reason they swarm windows and doors is because they are looking for a way indoors for the winter. Well, yesterday, they breached our defenses. They got it. As we were heading upstairs for the night, Willa shrieked, “Mommy, look! They got in!” Sure enough, those nasty little things had somehow gotten in the front door and were covering it like a drape. Now they are everywhere inside our house. I found two under the covers last night in bed.

And I know we are not alone. Friends report them in every room of the house. My mother-in-law can’t use her basement door any more, there are so many beetles there. My grandmother-in-law reported that as she was feeding the chickens the other day ladybugs were falling on her like raindrops, even getting inside her shirt. She was outraged, as well she should be. They cling to our sheets on the line. They get in our hair, under our clothes, in our cars. And they bite. And they smell, too, especially after you kill them. I guess that’s their payback for the satisfying little crunch you hear when you step on them.

While cries of “Ladybugs!” don’t have the resonance of, say, “Killer bees!” or even “Ants!”, the sheer volume of these pests is a little unnerving. Seeing your windows darkened by a swarm of these creatures may not be terrifying exactly, but it is a little creepy. The problem is that there is strength in numbers, and these ladybugs have us outnumbered, by, I would guess, a million to one.

Now, I know that these creatures serve an incredibly valuable purpose, and I am grateful that all summer long, these same beetles laid waste to all the nasty aphids and scale that otherwise would have destroyed the area’s crops and other plants. But now the aphids are gone and the beetles are still here, looking for food and a place to sleep off their aphid hangover for the winter. And there aren’t just a few here and there; no, they are around in swarms. Why? Well, blame love if you will. One beetle will release pheromones to attract another beetle, which in turn releases pheromones to attract more beetles, which in turn release more pheromones, which in turn attracts more bugs until you’ve got yourself a beetle party of gargantuan proportions. And they all want in.

For the record, these beetles are not the same little red ladybugs we have come to know and love so well. These are, technically speaking, Asian lady beetles. Their proper name is Harmonia axyridis, a rather lovely moniker for such a bothersome pest this time of year. Unlike the native ladybugs, Asian lady beetles are mostly orange, as opposed to red, and have 19 black spots (trust me). And they aren’t local. In the 1970s and 1980s, the federal government imported and intentionally released the Asian lady beetle to help control aphids on pecan trees in Georgia and fruit orchards in California. By all accounts, the beetles did a great job there and everywhere they migrated after that. They are a very effective and beneficial “introduced biological control agent” as the feds would say. But that doesn’t make them any less annoying this time of year.

So, what are we to do? These beetles have no known predator (which mystifies me. If I were a bat or bird, I would be feasting already.) and experts advise against mass pesticide use on them, lest their populations be too low come next summer when we need them.

According to the University of Illinois Extension Horticulture & Environment Educator Sandra Mason, we should just be patient. They will stop swarming soon and settle into the cracks of our houses or on windowsills or other areas. Extension advises sweeping them up with a vacuum, rather than using any sprays or foggers. And Mason had this last word of advice: “Remember, outdoor ladybugs are good bugs. Repeat this over and over to yourself as you are scooping them up from your windowsills.”

Good luck with that.

Stephanie Abbajay is a writer for the Jersey County Journal.