Invasion!

There is really only one thing on my mind right now. We have been invaded. It's like living in the midst of Hitchcock's The Birds, except it is Asian beetles. They are covering my house, my barn, and even me when I venture outside! This is an insect plague of Biblical proportions, seriously. You see the picture there? They are covering the entire house like that! I tried to take a big picture, but you can't see the bugs when I get too far away.

These bugs have no sense of personal space, and I don't mean that they invade the two or three feet of space around my person. No, I mean that they land on my nose, in my eye, and even fly into my mouth if I should foolishly open it for any reason. They look like orange lady bugs, but it becomes obvious fairly quickly that they are not the sweet little bugs that we knew as children, the ones that had poems and books written in their honor. These suckers bite -- hard! And they stink! And they leave their foul odor wherever they land with their stinky little feet.

They are completely covering the outside of the house, so whenever someone opens a door, they enter. As you approach the house, they swarm around you like bees on honeysuckle, and at least half a dozen, perhaps even a dozen, will land on you to hitchhike into the house. If only I'd known that they are attracted to white houses, I'd have chosen a darker siding! The USDA Fact Sheet tries to emphasize that they eat aphids, but seriously, this is overkill. I can't imagine that we have this many aphids in the area to keep them all fed.

So, while other people may have been enjoying the beautiful weather yesterday, I was flicking, flinging, and slinging these beetles as I attempted to get tulip and daffodil bulbs planted. And I still don't have my garlic in the ground. So, now I am hoping for a really hard freeze. Until then, we'll be living with these annoying pests flying in our faces, our hair, and our house.