The Hush of Ladybugs

They came! Oh, glorious little things, they came! I somehow missed them last year and thought they were gone for good, but after cold and rainy winter, and a long chilly spring, the earth has warmed and woken up the ladybugs. And here they come, floating through the sky, their silent, milling traffic over my head, and clinging by thousands to the posts and plants and walls of my house. I love the migration.

Maybe I missed it last year because I was sick. That’s possible. Their migration doesn’t last long, less than a day or two. And I had worried that we had also missed it this year, or that they had chosen some other place to call their homebase. But yesterday while gardening, I noticed a small abundance of them here and there and was hopeful. 

Then, today, I looked out the window.

Normally, the site of thousands of bugs filling the air might give one pause, or likely the heebie-jeebies, but this is beautifully different, wondrous even. Silent and reverent. I am sitting on the porch at this very moment, hearing the creek, the breeze in the trees, my song birds, and feeling the hush of the ladybugs.

I learned that ladybugs come to this place every year, having never before been here in their lives. They follow some mystical map, a geographic spirit quest, returning to the place where they were conceived, having never seen it before. They steal away each fall to some hidden den to hibernate, then come out one warm spring day. 

Today.

After mating here, they will head out into the world, some of them flying hundreds of miles, to lay their eggs, and live their lives, and die. Then, when the time comes, their children will return to this very spot; a place they have never before seen, by route they have never before traveled. 

The reverence I feel sitting here as the red speckled procession flows like an unphotographable river over my head is so immense I can scarcely breathe.  It is pure peace. I wish I could share this hush with the world. 

Treading carefully, as ladybugs have landed on the ground. 

Doing a “ladybug check”, before going inside. We don’t want any hitchhikers!