Ladybug

“ And there's the fire-fly, which is a soft-bodied beetle.
"And there's the very useful little beetle we call the ladybug, which is not a bug, but a beetle. The ladybug is a great help to men who own fruit orchards in the West. All over the country are to be found little bugs called scale insects. These scales are very bad for trees, because with their long, slender beaks the scales pump out the sap. ”

“ Nobody ever saw Jennie Junebug on Farmer Green's place again.
And Mrs. Ladybug was more than satisfied. [Pg 76]
XVI
PLAYING DEAD
Farmer Green's apple trees looked green and flourishing. Thanks to Mrs. Ladybug—and some of her relations—there was scarcely an insect left on the leaves. And since there was no more work to be done in the orchard just then, and nothing for her to eat, Mrs. Ladybug settled among the raspberry bushes near the duck pond. She said that they needed her attention. ”

“ Ladybug must have a much bigger house than the Bumblebee family's. She couldn't squeeze her children into such small quarters as theirs. Why, she has more children than she can count." [Pg 88]
XIX
THE DINNER BELL
There was great excitement in Farmer Green's orchard. The neighbors came a-flying and a-running and a-crawling from all directions. And little Mrs. Ladybug was the cause of the hurly-burly. She had appeared with a strange, flaring object hanging by a cord from her waist—if she could be said to have a waist. The queer, dangling thing had a handle at its upper end. ”

“ Here I work my hardest to save the leaves by ridding them of tiny insects that feed upon them—insects that suck the juices from the leaves and make them wither. And there's Jennie Junebug, trying her best to destroy the leaves that I save.... It's enough to make an honest person weep."
Perhaps Jennie Junebug wasn't so bad, at heart, as Mrs. Ladybug thought her. Maybe she was merely a gay, careless creature who never stopped to consider that she was injuring Farmer Green when she hurt his trees. At least, that was what some of Mrs. Ladybug's other neighbors sometimes remarked. ”

“ Ladybug was saying. "She never had any quarters, so far as anyone knows. Mrs. Ladybug hasn't been able to tear herself away [Pg 99] from the orchard long enough to live anywhere except in the apple trees."
It was plain that Daddy Longlegs' wife didn't believe what Mrs. Ladybug was telling her neighbors. And there were many more folk that agreed with her.
Little Mrs. Ladybug smiled a knowing smile when she heard what her friends thought.
"They'll see! They'll see!" she said. "I'm going to spend the winter in the biggest and finest house on this farm." ”

“ Mrs. Ladybug retorted. "The sooner you get such silly notions out of your head, the better off you'll be. Everybody ought to work. Too much play is bad for folks."
Buster Bumblebee could feel himself flushing. The neighbors were not expected to address a Queen's son in that fashion.
"That's exactly the way you talk about Betsy Butterfly!" he exploded.
"Huh!" Mrs. Ladybug sniffed. "You are a worthless pair. ”

“ Ladybug feel that she was not to be trusted.
"I must hurry back to the orchard," Mrs. Ladybug announced. "There's work waiting for me there. I really ought not to have left it to come to see you."
"Don't take your work so seriously!" her cousin advised her. "You ought to take more time for amusement. I hope you'll come to see me often."
Mrs. Ladybug's opinion of the stranger sank even lower.
"If some of us weren't earnest about our work the rest of the world would have a sorry time," she declared. "I may as well tell you that I shall not be able to call on you again. I shall be too busy. ”

“ And as soon as she had fully recovered from the rude blow that Peppery Polly Bumblebee dealt her, she set out for Farmer Green's garden and the potato patch.
For some time Mrs. Ladybug flew back and forth above the potato vines. It was not an easy matter to find so small a person as Mr. Bug in so big a field. ”

“ Not only was Betsy Butterfly a beautiful creature. She was pleasant to everybody. And almost all her neighbors were just as pleasant to her. Mrs. Ladybug was one of the few that were sometimes disagreeable to Betsy. For Mrs. Ladybug did not approve of her. She thought that Betsy Butterfly was frivolous. And she frowned whenever she saw Betsy in her beautiful costume.
"She never wears working clothes," Mrs. Ladybug often complained, when talking to her friends. ”

“ Then Mrs. Ladybug did the thing that she always did whenever she had a great fright. She played dead. She pulled her feet under her body, out of sight, and stuck, motionless, to the grass stalk.
Nothing happened. And she was [Pg 79] about to take another sly look at the frog when something moved the stalk of grass. It was only the wind. But Mrs. Ladybug didn't know that. She was sure that the frog had touched it.
Then Mrs. Ladybug played her next trick. She let go of the stalk and dropped to the ground, where she lay upon her side as if she would never move again. ”

“ A HANDSOME STRANGER
Little Mrs. Ladybug was too excited to work. Ever since meeting the stranger in the orchard she had been able to think of nothing but him. Perhaps if she hadn't happened to notice his carpetbag, with the words, "P. Bug, Colorado," upon its side, she might not have been so stirred up.
Anyhow, Mrs. Ladybug kept wondering what business had brought the stranger to Pleasant Valley. She wished she could find out what he was going to do in the potato patch. ”

“ P. Bug is a hard worker and he doesn't care for show. He's a plain person. No [Pg 34] doubt he put on that yellow coat to travel in, because it's his best. But he'll wear overalls, perhaps, if he starts to work in the potato patch—as I suspect he will."
At last, however, Mrs. Ladybug met with a rude shock. She was telling her news to Peppery Polly Bumblebee, one of the workers in the hive ruled by Buster Bumblebee's mother, the well-known Queen. And to Mrs. Ladybug's amazement, when she related the name of the stranger, and the place he came from, Peppery Polly laughed in her face. ”

“ Mrs. Wren talked a good deal, afterward, about her terrible experience. Yet she never stopped to think about the pretty beetle—about little Mrs. Ladybug. For Mrs. Ladybug had had a dreadful fright. Luckily she wasn't hurt. But it was a long time before she was her usual busy, able self again. And later, when she told her friends about her adventure, she said that she couldn't understand how Rusty came to make such a mistake.
"I supposed," Mrs. Ladybug declared, "that every bird in Pleasant Valley knew I wasn't good to eat." [Pg 26]
VI
THE TRAVELER
Farmer Green's garden was growing fast. ”

“ Mrs. Ladybug snapped. "He's at work over in the potato patch, helping Farmer Green."
Peppery Polly laughed again, more unpleasantly than ever. [Pg 44]
"Helping Farmer Green!" she exclaimed. "He's eating the leaves off the vines as fast as he can. I know that gentleman. He's Mr. Potato Bug. And he's one of the greatest pests on the farm." [Pg 45]
X
A BIT OF NEWS
Chirpy Cricket was looking for Mrs. Ladybug. He had news for her. Now, it wasn't often that anybody could tell Mrs. Ladybug anything. Usually she was the one that told other people bits of gossip. ”

“ Ladybug smiled an odd sort of smile as she answered, "The fire alarm, of course! Everybody's always talking fire to me. It makes me frightfully uneasy. There's so little one can do alone in case of fire. ”

“ Mrs. Green ought to know that the Carpet Bug family are covered with black, white and red scales. Ugh!"
Mrs. Ladybug shuddered. She was smooth and shiny herself. So it wasn't strange that she should have felt insulted.
"Anyhow," she added, "Mrs. Green is the loser. Toward spring I would have kept her house plants free from insects. But now, of course, she'll have to do that herself."
"Well," said the neighbors (or words to this effect) , "we're glad to see you again. [Pg 116] And now—tell us!—where do you expect to spend the winter?"
"I'll let you decide that," Mrs. Ladybug replied. ”

“ After we learn that a ladybug lives almost entirely on plant lice and scale insects, we never kill one again except perhaps to place a specimen In our collection. Naturalists say that without ladybugs, our orchards would soon be entirely killed off.
The dragon fly or mosquito hawk as well as “water tigers,” water striders and many kinds of beetles are the natural enemies of mosquitoes and as they never harm our crops we should never harm them. Nearly every living creature has some enemies. ”

“ Not all of the live things that you find about your plants and flowers are injurious, however, and you must learn to recognize those which are beneficial. The ladybug, although a beetle, lives on aphides, and so is your helper in destroying them. Several beetles, like the fiery ground beetle, subsist on cutworms, and the soldier bug dines on the destructive offspring of beetles and moths. The daddy-long-legs and the spider are also friends to your garden, together with many wasps. ”

“ Ladybug.
p. 21"Really," Jennie confided to her companion, "it's a good thing to have backs as hard and slippery as yours and mine. For the dust can't stick to us as it does to some."
"There's no excuse for not keeping oneself neat," Mrs. Ladybug said severely. "And I shall give Betsy Butterfly a piece of my mind."
p. 22
V NO JOKER Much to Mrs. Ladybug's surprise, she did not find Betsy Butterfly in the flower garden.
"It's too bad she's not here," Mrs. Ladybug remarked to her friend Jennie Junebug, who accompanied her. "We'll have to look in the meadow. ”

“ It cannot get away as the windows are all screened. He may have the room to himself and Aunt Lucy can sleep in the spare room."
Amy spied a Lady bug on the climbing rosebush, she caught it and gave it to her little brother to comfort him for his loss. Papa told the children never to harm a Lady bug because they are very useful insects. "In fact," said he, "I would like to have them on all my vines and bushes, for they always feed on the plant lice, which infest our choicest flowers. Indeed, I never could think of a Lady bug as a mere insect." "Oh!" said Amy, "why can't we call her Lady bird. ”

“ Both the young and the parents are very helpful to the garden because they eat harmful insects—scale insects and aphids or green plant lice.
One species of ladybird which the California fruit growers brought from Australia has been the means of exterminating a scale insect very injurious to the orange and lemon trees of the Western coast. The larva of the ladybird turns into a hard encased pupa, and later into a full-grown ladybird insect.
“My,” exclaimed Mary Frances, “another garden friend! Why, Billy, one is never alone in the garden. There are always lots of friends about.” ”

“ Who can explain the origin of the sexes? What is the cause that determines that one individual in a brood of Stylops, for example (Fig. 184, male; Fig. 185, grub-like female in the body of its host) , shall be but a grub, living as a parasite in the body of its host, while its fellow shall be winged and as free in its actions as the most highly organized insect? It is no less mysterious, because it daily occurs before our eyes. So perhaps none the less mysterious, and no more discordant with known natural laws may the law that governs the origin of species seem to those who come after us. ”

“ Rose-bugs are also eaten greedily by domesticated fowls; and when they become exhausted and fall to the ground, or when they are about to lay their eggs, they are destroyed by moles, insects, and other animals, which lie in wait to seize them. Dr. Green informs us that a species of dragon-fly, or devil’s needle, devours them. He also says that an insect, which he calls the enemy of the cut-worm, probably the larva of a Carabus, or predaceous ground-beetle, preys on the grubs of the common dor-bug. ”

“ The female insect, as we have seen, unlike the male, is destined never to desert the larval home. For her no hour of emergence ever comes. When the pupa has slept the appointed time, the unwieldy and almost motionless moth feels little of the movement of oncoming life then experienced by her lithe and lively partner; the animal, still resident within the habitaculum formed by the larva, splits asunder the pupa skin, and her transformations are complete; in some, at least, of the species the female imago is continually inclosed in the pupa case. ”

“ There is a Netherlandish tradition that to see Lady-birds forebodes good luck;17 and in England it is held extremely unlucky to destroy these insects. Persons killing them, it is thought, will infallibly, within the course of the year, break a bone, or meet with some other dreadful misfortune.18
In England, the children are accustomed to throw the Lady-bird into the air, singing at the same time,—
Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly away home ”

“ But to the granger laity the entomologist is always a "bug-hunter," even though no single species of a bug is to be found in his entire insect cabinet.
What, then, is a bug, and why is the discrimination of "bugs of some sort" so truly applicable to this brood with the snowy wool which grows upon the alder twigs?
The term "bug" has almost become a popular synonym for "insect." All bugs are insects, 'tis true, but it by no means follows that all insects are bugs. ”

“ In the insect world the reverse is true. Here the female is supreme and often eats up the male after she has been fertilized by him. Motherhood is the primary fact, fatherhood the secondary. It is the female mosquito that torments the world. It is the female spider that spins the web and traps the flies. Size, craft, and power go with the female. The female spider eats up the male after he has served her purpose; her caresses mean death. The female scorpion devours the male in the same way. ”