Ladybird

I was sitting, reading this afternoon beside the river which runs past our cottage. The tide was running out quietly and all was peaceful, except for the occasional water-skier or dinghy with fishing folk heading upstream. Swallows skimmed the surface of the water, and a kookaburra sat in a tree nearby scanning the bushland for a potential meal – hopefully not a snake. It’s the season for snakes so it’s prudent to keep a lookout. We certainly don’t want our dog to find one because he’s a curious little fellow and might be bitten. Charlie – that’s his name - was lying on the deck eyeing off the kookaburra. Both dog and bird lay claim to the area around the cottage and are very suspicious of one another. As I continued reading, a tiny red and white insect began a journey across my page. It was a ladybird. I tried to divert her path onto my finger but she was having none of that. As soon as possible she returned to her original trajectory, and then, coming to the edge of the paper, she crawled down onto the table and up onto a piece of driftwood. It had been a long time since I’d seen a ladybird. A few years ago, there were any number of them, but then they all seemed to disappear. Later, I did a bit of googling and discovered that, officially, ladybirds are coccinellids, but every culture seems to have its own particular name for them. They are often associated with the Virgin Mary which I thought was particularly significant for this Christmas time of the year. They are considered lucky and help the gardener by eating aphids. In certain climatic conditions, however, their numbers increase dramatically and they become a pest. Farmers, though, are loathe to kill them, and instead smoke them out. Hence the nursery-rhyme:

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home.

Your house is on fire and your children are gone.

(The adult insects would fly away from the smoke but their offspring as grubs would die).

They say that if you recite this rhyme when you see a ladybird, your wishes will come true. Hope so.

The novel I’m reading involves domestic violence and I was intrigued to learn –google again - that the Dutch use the ladybird as the symbol for their association: Foundation Against Senseless Violence.

My ladybird didn’t seem anxious to fly away. I was quite happy for her to stay as long as she liked, but the breeze had got up and I needed to go inside where it was a bit warmer.