Monday, October 31, 2011

Ladybug


Remember when you were a kid, and  you were either lonely, sick or sad?  Then a ladybug appears on your finger or if you're lucky rests herself on the tip of your nose and as you look into her eyes, you feel better?  Mishy had another visitor by her favorite riverbank in her small world.  First she flew quickly passed me and landed quite close to me.  I asked her to stay still 'if you please, because soon winter will come and I know you are cold blooded and you will hibernate during the winter.  So I might never see you again" and with that, she stayed still for me to take her picture.
I had to be quick because her little wings actually beats over 80 times a second! That's even faster than a hummingbird who beats 50 times a second.
A lady bug is a sort of beetle and she wears either an orange or red dress with black spots or in some parts of the world, she will don a black dress with red spots!  In choosing, well naturally selecting these clothes she is actually very smart, because in the natural world her bright colored clothing is often viewed as unsafe or unpleasant to eat.  So birds won't eat her and if that fails, she's got another trick up her sleeve and she just falls to the ground and plays dead.

Tiny lady bugs can eat aphids which can destroy crops and plants and her name actually came from a Legend that dates back as far as the Middle Ages at a time in Europe where crops were being damaged by pests.  Farmers began praying to the Blessed Lady, The Virgin Mary, and well legend says that soon lady bugs began to appear and saved the fields from pests! So you see this is when her new adoptive name was lady beetle, which through time she has been introduced simply as "LadyBug".  She's been known to bring luck and good fortune and Mishy was sure fortunate enough to have seen her.