Each summer when we were kids, my folks would drive the two-hour, switch-back road to Palomar Mountain in Southern California to take us camping. We would hike the trail in the woods, rounding the bend to the Belly Button Tree, past the Hand Tree, and then through the meadow to the pompous grass Hippy Huts by the footbridge. Beyond that was The Dark Forest, that we kids thought was a little creepy, so we would usually turn around at that point. One summer as we headed back through the meadow, we discovered clumps of tall grasses covered with ladybugs. At their bases, there were hundreds of them. I remember my dad reaching into a clump and scooping up a hand completely full of lovely crimson buttons. He filled two or three canning jars full, and we brought them home to spread on our organic garden. My parents raised honey bees, and had the biggest compost pile you've ever seen. Those little ladybugs would have been right at home, had they not immediately marched themselves right over the garden fence and into our neighbor's yard. That neighbor bragged all summer about his ladybug luck.
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Last year there was one day when we noticed an abundance of ladybugs had suddenly shown up on our property. We were surprised to see dozens of them flying in the sky and perhaps over a hundred landing on the shady side of the house in the late afternoon. It was all over by the next day, but it had been a delight.
Well, let me tell you... that was NOTHIN'!
A few weeks ago we noticed little flashes of golden light zipping past our second-story dinning room window. I went to look and was excited to announce to the house, "The ladybugs are back!" I stood admiring them for a few minutes and then went about my single morning chore of being the ruthless taskmaster that my poor, pitiful, overworked children believe me to be.
Several hours later I chanced past the window again and caught my breath. A super-highway of little red and black darlings sped through the blue sky above; hundreds upon hundreds of specks, wings glowing in the sunlight, zipping back and forth in a steady, almost calm stream. I went outside and called Guy to join me on the porch. There was something so reverent in that moment, I felt compelled to whisper as we stood on the shady porch watching caravans of hundreds of ladybugs march in meandering lines up the eaves toward the rooftop. All the while thousands of ladybugs spun around us in the air in utter silence. It felt like a precious dance, or like watching a sleeping newborn. It felt like praying.
I went to my dad's apartment downstairs and found him sitting in his living room in front of the open doorway.
"I've never seen so many bees," he said in wonder, his beekeeper days surely fresh in his mind.
"They're not bees... they're ladybugs!" I whispered.
I beckoned him outside and took him to the front of the house, the North side, where their display was most impressive. We stood on the porch giggling and gazing skyward with sparkling eyes. The ladybugs landed on us here and there, and then left quickly. They had somewhere to be. Jonah and Nano joined us and with timid excitement tried to get the ladybugs to climb on their fingers, but the busy bugs were on a quest, and were not interested in exploring little hands.
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| If you look closely, you'll see twenty or so above my dad's head. |
We stayed outside for a good long while, noticing how the aerial commute seemed to mostly be heading South, over the house, across our little meadow and off, into the woods. Dad and I chatted about Palomar, and his unlucky ladybug day. "I've learned since that you have to give them protein so they'll stay," he said. Dad always knows things like that. Then he excused himself to go back downstairs, and I headed off into the house, deciding I would check on the ladybugs again in a little while.
I got busy and when, a few hours later, I thought to look out the window again, they were gone. Nearly all of them. Their mass exodus, that black-spotted, red cloaked migration, had moved on, into the woods, or maybe out into the big world somewhere.
That night I went online and learned that when the ladybugs come out of hibernation, they are on a single-mined quest to mate and get on their way to parts unknown. They leave and spread out across the countryside, traveling massive distances to lay their little eggs and then live out their lives, out there, somewhere, never to return.
The real magic is that their children, who have never before been to the place where they were conceived, will travel untold miles to arrive right back...here. They will collect here this fall by the tens of thousands, to live the quiet dance all again.
And I'll be waiting for them.
With protein.
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