Tuesday, October 03, 2006, 19:23
Too Much Bad News. . .
For those of you who received the Sept. 29 edition of my newsletter Rural Route 2 News and read about the lady who e-mailed me because a friend had found four kittens on the road in a charcoal briquette bag and had brought them to the lady to take care of -- all four of the kittens died yesterday.
The lady said she was going to feed them before she went to her doctor's appointment and discovered that three of them were gone. She took the fourth one to the doctor with her and then stopped at the vet clinic afterward. The fourth kitten died at the vet clinic.
The vet said he thought they had been in the charcoal bag too long before anyone found them and that there wasn't anything anyone could do for them.
The lady said she was devastated that all four had died and that even though she'd only had them for 5 days, they had worked their way into her heart. (Of course they did!)
You know, when stupid, cowardly people do crap like that and leave kittens in a charcoal bag so someone will run over them -- not only are they discarding living creatures as if they were of no more worth than a used Kleenex, they are also bringing sorrow and grief to another person who has the compassion to try to help the little ones. It is a double tragedy -- for the kittens and the lady. And it is a double crime, to my way of thinking, for the perpetrator.
The person who left those kittens there in that bag on that road could have easily taken them to the Humane Society or left them by the back door of a vet clinic where someone could have found them sooner and helped them. But no. That would have been the RESPONSIBLE thing to do. The COMPASSIONATE thing to do.
It strikes me that many of the problems we have in our society today are because too many people have no sense of responsibility and no sense of compassion for other people and for other living creatures -- and have lost a lot of their common sense.
The same is true of all the school shootings of late. I don't even want to get into that one. A principal in Wisconsin killed in a tiny school district the size of the school districts around where I live. Innocent children killed. So many families devastated. So many families who will never "get over it" no matter how much time passes. So many witnesses who will never "get over it" -- who will carry it with them for the rest of their days.
All I can say is -- what in the H*E*L*L is wrong with people?
How did we get to this point?
And what can we do to turn it around?
Or maybe we cannot turn it around. . .
Bugs -- After spraying around the basement door Monday for the Asian lady beetles that have been congregating around the house, I ended up sweeping up three dustpans full of the little buggers. Lady beetles that had crawled through the space around the door and then had fallen down dead. Not three dustpans all at once. But on three separate occasions.
All things considered -- that wasn't bad. I have seen them much, much worse.
It is cooler out today and mostly cloudy or with only a little hazy sunshine. The Asian lady beetles are not as active today. Thank goodness. Maybe I will only need to sweep up, say, one dustpan full at the end of the day.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Monday, October 02, 2006, 20:42
That Time of Year
It's that time of year again. This afternoon it is warm and sunny -- 84 degrees.
And when it is warm and sunny on a fall day after the farmers have started to harvest the soybean fields and winter is just around the corner, it only means one thing.
Lady bugs.
Oh, no. Wait. Excuse me.
Multi-colored Asian Lady Beetles.
Far be it for me to confuse true Lady Bugs with the Multi-colored Asian Lady Beetles.
Over the last several years, Randy and I have only seen two or three *real* Lady Bugs. And when we do, it's cause for celebration. The true Lady Bugs are bright red. The Asian Lady beetles are various colors of orange.
The lady beetles are congregating around the house today. Not nearly so bad as I have seen them in years past. But they are crawling all over the house.
This morning I got out my handy-dandy can of bug spray to spray around the door upstairs and the door downstairs to try to keep some of them from coming into the house.
The lady beetles are extremely sensitive to anything with pyrethrins or permethrins. They either avoid it all together, or they crawl across and it fall down dead.
I have no way of knowing how bad the lady beetles will be this year. In years past, they have been so thick around the house that you could not walk outside without getting them down your shirt and in your hair and behind your glasses.
They are not that bad today.
And not only are the lady beetles coming to the house, but I am also seeing far more Box Elder bugs than I have seen in years past. Usually I only see a few Box Elder bugs, but this year, they are thick on the front of the house, too.
I'm not sure what that means. Seeing as it was so hot and dry this past summer, I thought maybe the lady beetles and the Box Elder bugs would not be so bad this fall.
The lady beetles can be bad because of their sheer numbers. The Box Elder bugs, even though there are not so many of them as the lady beetles, are far more frightening to look at. They appear downright menacing. Black bugs with red markings and long feelers.
Box Elder bugs, it would seem, are not aggressive. The lady beetles are not especially aggressive either. I have read that lady beetles don't bite -- that they just "pinch" the skin. For my money, a lady beetle pinching my skin feels very much like a lady beetle biting my skin!
There's not much we can do about the lady beetles and the Box Elder bugs. The lady beetles are an example of a beneficial insect that is a transplant and that has gotten so successful it has become a pest. The Box Elder bugs are just Box Elder bugs.
Even so, I am probably going to be picking more lady beetles out of my hair today. And I will have to keep picking them off until it cools down again. Then we won't see very many of them until the next warm, sunny fall day.
LeAnn R. Ralph