The LadyBug Mystery

So, as the weather turns cooler, we get around two or three ladybugs in our house. Every year. They live on the ceiling of our bedroom, in a corner, and some times crawl down the frosty window and let us admire their utter cuteness.

Chip is fascinated by them. From since he was a baby. When they come down the window, he can watch them for hours (ok, I am exaggerating, but hey, I am a blogger!) with rapt attention. Their tiny feet, their hard backs, their strange wings and their half-hearted, clumsy attempts to fly and their total inability to flip themselves if they happen to land on their backs. It’s a fascinating lesson of nature right on our windowsill for Chip.

Last weekend as we got ready to go out, Chip spotted a ladybug come down from its heavenly abode. He was delighted to watch it. I was delighted to get him out my hair while I dressed. He watched the bug for a few minutes and then dashed out of the bedroom. I could hear him downstairs in the kitchen, opening a drawer. In a flash he was up, wielding a plastic storage box. “I wanna keep them” he told me. Without waiting for me to answer, he ran into the bathroom, opened the vanity and got a ball of cotton. Using his makeshift brush, he tried to coax the red bug in his box. The ladybug was obviously frightened at Chip’s ham-fisted attempts to “catch” it and tried to feebly move in the other direction. “Aie, its running away”, he exclaimed. “Let it” I told him. “Why do you want to catch it? We don’t even know what it eats” “I’ll give it a green leaf.” said Chip, no doubt drawing his wisdom from the nature bible for 3 year olds – The hungry caterpillar.

“Please put him in the box” he pleaded with me. I gently brushed the ladybug (which appeared a little lethargic and sick) into the box. “What are you calling him?” I asked. Chip pondered over the question. “Sheanoo.” He said. Sheanoo? Chip has come up with some imaginative names in the past – his rag doll is called Shant because he is quiet, duh. And our fish is called submarine because it lives in water. “What’s Sheanoo?” I asked. Chip looked as if some great force had sucked out the intelligence from his mom’s head. “I told you. That’s the ladybug’s name. He is Sheanoo. How many times must I tell you?” And off he walked with the ladybug, trying to snuggle with it under the comforter.

After I told him, he could not snuggle with the lady bug he looked sullenly at me and he just kept playing with it on the window sill when, another ladybug joined Sheanoo in the box. Chip ran into the bathroom to show me. “Another one came” he grinned. “That’s so cool. What are you going to call Sheanoo’s friend?” I asked. “Chivda.” This time I did not bother asking what Chivda was all about.

But this is not the end of the story. I told Chip to go downstairs and put his shoes on. Chip for once did not run, but climbed down the stairs carefully, with the ladybugs in his box. As I straightened up the room, I could hear Chip pottering around the kitchen downstairs and when I went down a few minutes later, Chip had dumped a bag of skittles (they are small hard, round candies, that umm look like ladybugs, the red ones at least) in the box that had the ladybugs and was eating them one by one. “Chip! That box had ladybugs in them. What have you done with the ladybugs?” Chip looked down at the box and searched for Sheanoo and Chivda. “They are lost” he told me with a puzzled expression on his face. “Lost? Lost? How could you put skittles in the box that had ladybugs? And you wanted to keep them as pets? You can’t even look after them for five minutes.” I ranted. “Where are they?” “I don’t know Aie, they are lost.” “Did you eat them?” I was suspicious. Chip had eaten ants before and it took him a while to get into his head that we don’t eat ants. “Did you eat them?” “Umm.. I don’t know.” Sheanoo and Chivda were no where to be seen. I looked in the kitchen if they had flown away, but couldn’t see them on the countertops, floor, even the ceiling. One of them was too sickly to even move, let alone fly. I looked and looked but we never did find those ladybugs. Wonder what’s happened to them. I guess we’ll never know.