On June 4, 2019, meteorologists in the San Diego, California, area spotted an anomalous blob on the radar. Was it a storm system? No rain had been in the forecast. Upon investigation, the blob turned out to be a massive swarm of ladybugs, covering an estimated 80 x 80 mile area, flying 5,000 to 9,000 feet above ground. The insects were headed in the direction of Mexico. I say swarm, but when ladybugs do it, it’s called a bloom. Not all blooms are migratory. The most common time for this grouping is during cooler weather, when ladybugs clump together for warmth and security.
I’ve seen a ladybug bloom, once. This was almost exactly 16 years ago, shortly after we’d moved to this house. It was a strange autumn in 2007, in nature as well as in the human world, where, thanks to greed gone wild, things were falling to pieces financially.
We’d been in the new house about a month, and it felt as though the oak in the front yard disapproved of us. You’d think the sound of acorns on a roof would be pleasant, calming and melancholy, like raindrops. Nope. They rattled like machine gunfire and rolled annoyingly under our feet on the front steps and walk. Then came the day of the bloom. I parked in the driveway in the late afternoon and found the west face of the house covered with a writhing tapestry of ladybugs. Thousands and thousands of them. Hundreds clinging to the screen of the back door. It was beautiful—the sun was hitting them at just the right angle to make them sparkly—and deeply unsettling. I lugged our groceries to the front door, which fortunately was ladybug free.
Ladybugs are also known as ladybirds, or ladycows, depending on how far back in English you care to go. Birds and bugs: pretty self explanatory. Although bugs is technically incorrect, according to killjoy entomologists. These creatures have the wrong kind of life cycle and mouth parts. Ladybugs are beetles. I wondered: why cows? Why ladies?
It’s thought that lady is related to the Virgin Mary. Farmers prayed for help with agricultural pests and started noticing little red bugs around that loved the taste of aphids, thereby saving the crops. At least the valiant ladybugs who could get past the aphids‘ ant-guards did. All the bathtub Marys of my town—and there are quite a few—wear a blue cloak, but in some iconography, beneath that cloak Mary’s dress is red. Therefore, the farmers called them lady in tribute to her. The “cows” part comes from the spots on a ladybug’s back looking like the spots on some cows.
Back in 2007 we thought, okay, this is going to be our life now, every fall marked by acorn clamor and ladybugs blotting out the siding. That turned out not to be the case. The oaks just happened to be masting rather massively that year.
The news in 2007 was too busy documenting the financial crisis to bother with stories about masting, but this fall my beloved Channel 4 ran several stories explaining this phenomenon. Evidently a lot of people have been complaining about acorns falling onto their heads this year. Oak masting happens about every two to five years. All the trees make more acorns than normal and drop their acorns at the same time. This gives more chances that some of those acorns will root and turn into oaks themselves, rather than squirrel fodder. Masting is more common after a year with difficult conditions, like drought.
Over the last 16 years we’ve had plenty of acorns, but in more restrained amounts; the yard squirrels find it easy to keep up. Every autumn a few ladybugs make their way into the house, where they occupy Capone the cat’s attention, saving my ankles some wear and tear, and eventually expire on our windowsills. However, there haven’t been any siding blooms. But this year…This year the oaks are masting and the acorns are pop-pop-popping. Superstitious, pattern-making me worries, and hopes that the ladybugs will bloom, if they must, out of my sight.
the jeanSpace 