Getting totally bugged by insect infestation

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/01/2018 (2973 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I should apologize for giving the mistaken impression that mice are the only creatures invading our home this winter.

The truth is — and I wish I did not have to share this with you — we are also being besieged (or bedevilled, if you will) by bugs.

Outside my house, a soul-destroying winter is sucking the will to live out of the frozen ears and nostrils of Manitobans foolish enough to venture into the icy wasteland.

Inside my house, every single (bad word) day, we are confronted by a handful of (another very bad word) red-and-black ladybugs.

Do not get me wrong. As a crusading newspaper columnist with naturally curly hair, I am not overly afraid of tiny bugs which, when I was a kid, we immortalized in the following song/poem: “Ladybug, ladybug/Fly away home/Your house is on fire/And your children are alone.”

Now that I think of it, that is a pretty creepy poem, and it doesn’t say much about the parenting skills of ladybugs.

For the record, I am also not afraid of mice, even though I have been known to emit high-pitched screeches after opening the door to our kitchen pantry and seeing the tiny whiskered head of an invading rodent popping out of the onion bag.

Getting back to the bugs, however, we are finding them everywhere — the kitchen, the living room, the den, the bedroom. Name a nook or cranny, and we have found ladybugs lurking there.

We are not alone. For example, here is the first paragraph of a story I have just read online in the Salisbury Post of North Carolina: “Every winter, my house is plagued with tiny crawling beetles. I know I am not alone, because I get phone calls from desperate homeowners asking me what to do about all these ladybugs in their houses. Yesterday one fell into my coffee!”

And guess what? I have also poured myself a cup of coffee, looked into the mug before taking a sip, and spotted the floating carcass of an ex-ladybug floating there amid the swirls of cream.

The thing is, when I say ladybug, what I am apparently referring to are Asian lady beetles, whose numbers have skyrocketed in Manitoba since they first arrived in North America in the 1990s, apparently hopping rides on ocean liners.

Unlike their North American ladybug cousins, the Asian lady beetles have two traits that make them unwelcome guests: 1) They bite; and 2) They give off a stinky, yellowish secretion when squished or when they want to ward off predators.

Here’s what Manitoba Agriculture entomologist John Gavloski told my colleague Bill Redekop when he wrote about the big beetle infestation last fall: “There’s quite a big population this year, and they’re quite widespread. People are writing or calling from across the province because they’re getting into houses in big numbers.”

It seems these bugs can squeak through the tiniest crack or gap in windows and door casings. In our case, however, they just stormed in through the back door, often riding on top of our three dogs.

I know I tend to exaggerate wildly in these columns (I am paid to play fast and loose with the truth), but the unvarnished truth is we had thousands and thousands of these little bugs coating the exterior walls of our house in the backyard.

Every day, my wife, She Who Must Not Be Named, would march out back and, armed with a kitchen broom, sweep layers of lady beetles off the wall, while venting her disgust by making the following sound: “Ewww! Ewww!”

The thing is, whenever the door was opened, several dozen bugs would fly, crawl, hop, skip, stroll, stride, sneak, shimmy or otherwise navigate into our house, where they would then seek winter refuge and an opportunity to bug us.

It is almost impossible now for me to have a bath in the morning without getting out of the tub and discovering the body of a drowned beetle circling the drain. I do not know if they are hiding in my hair and get washed out with the shampoo, or whether they are clinging to the ceiling above the tub and staging fatal and futile kamikaze-style attacks while I float in innocent bliss.

We have found rogue beetles in the drawers and in our closets and walking across the mirrors in our bathrooms, to name just a few recent sightings.

Like I said earlier, I do not have a phobia of these small, spotted insects, which is why I am going to bravely share the following story, which will not make me sound like the sort of manly man you have come to know in these columns.

It was about two weeks ago, and my wife and I were lying in bed, in the dark, with all three dogs, when, suddenly and without warning, I felt something crawling through my hair as my sleepy head lay on the pillow.

Naturally, I remained calm and, in an effort not to wake anyone, slipped out of bed and slammed my head against the wall. I am, of course, kidding.

What I actually did, in the dark, was screech at the top of my lungs — “HELP ME! HELP ME! HELP ME!” — while simultaneously levitating cartoon-style out of the bed, flipping over in mid-air, and landing on all fours, where I began panting like a frightened woodland creature.

Which is when my wife switched on her bedside light, allowing her, and all three dogs, to glare at me in a manner that suggested I am no longer pack leader.

But the important point is, in the light, there on my pillow, I spotted the source of my terror — a ladybug the size of a sesame seed that apparently had been jogging on the top of my head.

I’m guessing a lot of you are in the same bug-filled boat, so take my advice: There’s nothing to fear. Remain calm and, for the time being, examine your coffee with a magnifying glass before you gulp it down.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca