The Pseudo-Ladybug

I really only learned one thing in my college psychology class and that was the definition of “pseudo”. This very cool word means fake, phony or not real. I liked the sound of it so much that everything I felt was phony would be preceded by pseudo. Pseudo-ladybug is a term I created when I first encountered these little rascals about 10 years ago. It’s not in the dictionary or thesaurus and when I googled it, it said “Do you mean dis-ladybug”? Well, yes, kind of.


One October as I was standing in my in-laws yard having a conversation, this little ladybug flies over and casually lands on my arm. Aw, how sweet. How cute is this little tiny creature. As I watched it stroll down to my hand, my husband says “Those things bite, you know.” We all know ladybugs don’t bite, that’s just ridiculous. No sooner than that thought crossed my mind, it bit me. I smashed it. As I looked around there were tons more everywhere. All just flying around like a swarm of gnats. I looked closer and noticed that they weren’t red with black dots like they were supposed to be. They were brownish tan with black dots and almost exactly resembled a ladybug. I had to find out what the deal was so I started checking around and getting the scoop on these things. Turns out that from what I understand, these are Asian (Chinese) imported pseudo-ladybugs that were supposed to feed on the other bugs that were infesting the trees, eat aphids and just be good all around. I guess we (US Department of Agriculture) thought that if a couple are good for the garden, we (US Department of Agriculture) should go all out because more is better. Like THAT ever works. Well they (US Department of Agriculture) released these things in the woods and it just so happens that instead of hanging out on the trees,eating pests and aphids, they had a taste for houses. Every year in October we are inundated with thousands of tons of these pests and they crawl all over the houses and get in the cracks and crevices. They really enjoy landing on your clothes and getting stuck in your hair. They have assimilated closer to the red color over the years and that I find interesting.
My message here: Anything we (US Department of Agriculture)import from Asia (China) is probably not a good idea and I can just hear the snickering from across the ocean. I do have a similar stories about the fiasco with Asian hornets if you’re interested………