Kiddo#3 told my Patient Husband, “There are dots on my wall.”
I followed them into the room Kiddo#3 shares with Kiddo#4, and sure enough, he had dots on his walls. Ladybugs. Three of them.
“Four,” I said, finding another one on the lamp.
“One of them is a spider,” my Patient Husband said.
“Then that one over there is also a ladybug.”
He got the spider down and outside. (Before you ask, the wasp is already gone. In a dangerous game of wasp baseball, I hit a home-run with it right out the front door using a broom. Not that this seemed to damage the wasp any.)
I fetched a tupperware and proceeded to collect ladybugs, standing on a chair, talking to the things and wondering about my sanity. While collecting these four, I found a fifth.
I looked through the other bedrooms, but no one else had even one solitary ladybug.
There are a few possible explanations. One is that the boys are simply very, very lucky, ladybugs being a symbol of luck in China. Another is that they are simply very, very unlucky, and Kiddo#3 may have carried in an egg pod from outside after the kids engaged in a mindnumbingly violent leaf-fight.
Regardless, it’s that room and that room alone which attracts the ladybugs. I’ve since found another in there, and after finding the five, I recalled that the day before, I’d pitched out another one.
They’re benign enough. They’re cute. It’s kind of like the heartbreak of a lawn overrun with violets. But puzzling, and I’m curious as to whether their presence is good luck or bad, or whether God just thinks it’s funny to see me standing on a chair talking to ladybugs while plucking them off the ceiling and trapping them in a tupperware for release into the wild.
Personally I think we must amuse him mightily. I can see him just giggling while watching you collect ladybugs to toss outside.