· The black spots on their wings fade as they age
· Ladybug wings move very quickly, like a hummingbird’s, as much as 85 times per second in flight
· A ladybug can live for up to three years
· The male ladybug is smaller than the female
· Long ago, doctors used mashed-up ladybugs to cure toothaches
· The Swiss call ladybugs “Good God’s Little Fairy”
· The Ladybug is the state insect in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Tennessee and Ohio
http://www.howdididoit.com/home-garden/how-to-start-a-ladybug-garden/
Somehow, as is apt to occur in this household where non-linear thought and behaviour seems paramount, our search for information about earwigs (where we discovered the photograph below of one mimicking a scorpion) meandered off into other discoveries about praying mantises and ladybug gardens.
Our children are convinced that we need a garter snake because they pull weeds. (I deduce this to the slightly mutilated garter snake my dad came across - or rather, it came across my father - while he was whipper-snippering...it catapulted towards him from the weeds, sacrificing a few inches from its tail and eventually its life. He saved it for our kids to see - eyes wide open, it looked in a peaceful slumber save for the shadow of burgundy blood about its body. I imagine that this connection between weeds and snake somehow led to their belief that these scaly creatures actually yank unwanted weeds. Had I only known...!?!?)
