Tuesday, March 31, 2009, 19:30
The Creepy Crawlies (Lady Bugs That Is. . .)
Now that I have a cramp in my right hand and my hearing is impaired, I hope those people who thought it was a good idea to let a bunch of Multi-colored Asian Lady Beetles loose are happy.
I am thoroughly sick and tired (not to mention disgusted) about the number of lady bugs in my house this spring. Especially in the basement.
So, I spent two and a half hours on Monday with the shop vac, vacuuming them up. It didn't seem like there were that many lady bugs around last fall -- but they are emerging steadily from wherever they have been hiding over the winter.
Consequently. . .
When I am going to open a new bag of horse feed, I have to bounce the bag up and down on the floor to get all of the lady bugs off the bag.
Before I can scoop the feed out of the bag, I have to tap the scoop on the floor to get the lady bugs off it.
Before I can put feed in the horse buckets, I have to bang the buckets on the floor to get the lady bugs out from under the rim and from out of the buckets. I don't imagine Kajun and Isabelle would think that lady bugs mixed with their horse feed would taste very good.
Before I can fill buckets with water for Kajun and Isabelle, I have to tap the empty water buckets on the floor to get the lady bugs out from under the rim and off the rim and out of the bucket. I also don't think Kajun and Isabelle would appreciate lady bugs floating in their water, either.
I turn around from filling the buckets, and I notice large numbers of lady bugs in the basement window, too.
Before I go out to feed the horses, I take the broom and sweep up all of the lady bugs I tapped off the feed bag, scoop and buckets, sweep them into the dust pan and throw them outside.
And every day I tell them, "You found your way into the house last fall, why can't you find your way outside now?"
Except they have not been finding their way outside. Randy theorizes that because the weather has been warm for a few days, then quite cold for a few days, a slight warm up and then cold again, that they are emerging from hibernation but are not all that eager to actually go outside.
The lady bugs are upstairs in the house, too, although not in the numbers that I am finding them in basement. Still, enough lady bugs were crawling around on the ceiling of my office that if it was still and quiet in the house, I could hear them crawling.
In face of all that, I finally hit my tipping point Monday. I couldn't stand it anymore. I try to be as tolerant of the lady bugs as I can because I know they are only trying to survive the winter so they can go back outside and hunt aphids when the weather warms up. But enough is enough.
Monday morning after I fed the horses and hauled out some horse manure with the wheel barrow to the hayfield, I was ready to do battle with the shop vac. It would be nice if I could find someone within a hundred miles to fix my upright Hoover so I could vacuum the bugs up with that, but so far I haven't found anybody.
Well, that's not exactly true. There is a vacuum cleaner repair person in the next town over, but I am NOT going to give my business to him. When I called him about fixing the switch on my Hoover, he was very abrasive and all but called me stupid over the telephone for thinking I ought to fix my vacuum cleaner when HE had really nice $500 vacuum cleaners for sale.
We have one room left in the house with carpeting, and that's in my office. And not just any carpeting but 34 year old carpeting. Sometime this year, we are going to pull the carpeting in my office and put down self-adhesive tile. So why would I want to spend $500 on a vacuum cleaner for 34 year old carpeting that will be gone soon? And I don't think something to vacuum up the lady bugs is worth $500.
Anyway, I got out the shop vac and went to work in the basement first. The really disheartening thing is you can vacuum up hundreds and hundreds of lady bugs, but when you turn around again, there are more.
I vacuumed up what I could in the basement, then I brought the shop vac upstairs and went to work sucking the little darlings off the ceiling in the kitchen, dining room and my office. By the time I finally turned off the shop vac, my ears were buzzing. The shop vac is only a five-gallon one, but it makes quite a roar when it's running. By that time, my hand was cramping up, too, from holding onto the hose.
After Randy came home from work, he cleaned out the filter on the shop vac and vacuumed up some more of the lady bugs. It's a good thing he's tall with a long reach. I was able to get a few them out of the stairwell above the basement steps but Randy was able to get most of the rest of them.
I also had to clean out the compact fluorescent light bulb in a lamp in the dining room. The spirals of the bulb were filled with lady bugs as well. Randy vacuumed out what he could get, but then I had to scrub the light bulb with a toothbrush to get the rest of them. You know it's bad when your spiral shaped compact fluorescent is full of lady bugs packed into the coils.
I don't imagine that the lady bugs are going to be any more willing to go outside for the rest of the week, either. The weather forecast says snow, rain, freezing rain for the next few days.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Saturday, March 28, 2009, 05:04
Back Scratcher
Now that the weather has warmed up somewhat (at least it's not below zero!) the horses are beginning to shed. Last Sunday after church, Randy had raked up some of the horse manure that had thawed out and was tossing it over the fence onto the pile. Of course Isabelle had to come to see what we were doing. People in her pasture are MUCH more interesting than eating her hay.
"I'm sorry, Isabelle," I said, "Randy has the back scratcher."
Isabelle loves it when I scratch her back with the plastic manure fork.
Randy handed me the rake. "Use this," he said.
The rake makes all kinds of funny twangy noises when the metal teeth spring back. I put the rake on Isabelle's back and slowly began to "curry" her with it. She loved it. I curried her back and her shoulders and her rump and got all kinds of hair to loosen up. I even used it to "comb" her mane and tail.
When I thought I was finished on one side, Isabelle would either inch closer or she would turn around for me to do the other side again.
Never in a hundred years would I ever be able to do anything like that with Kajun. His Arab blood makes him much too worried about everything. Not Isabelle. She really must be a trusting little soul. And that's good, of course. I want her to trust me.
Now, if only I could get it across to Isabelle that she's much bigger than me and that when she swings her rear end around because she wants her tail scratched, she could accidentally knock me off my feet. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph