by Susan Irving

I don’t normally write, but these thoughts came to me as I was once again involved in the seemingly endless task of vacuuming up the thousands, maybe millions, of Asian beetles that enter my home in the fall. 

 YES, we all hate them, they get in our food and in our beds and bite us etc. etc. and are just little pests. But in the big scheme of things……..

ASIAN BEETLES (LADY BUGS)

The fields that nourished them
 Are now harvested
 and bare
They find "refuge" in my home.
Travelling along the crown moldings 
Innocent and mindlessly crawling
East and West
North and South
Never veering 
Unless to politely go around one another. 
An endless journey.
In search of . . . 
what?
Warmth, light and refuge?
Green leaves 
And aphids to eat?
Certainly not the dark interior
Of the vacuum cleaner....
And  then . . . 
Expulsion! 
Outdoors again
into a Cold Pond 
where I will dump them
And leave them to drown, 
Guiltily aware
That they are less harmful
 to this planet
than we humans
Could ever be.

Thanks to a helpful spider, these Asian beetles did not make it into the house!  But the little red Ladybug can stay!

So, have a pet peeve you could share in a creative fashion? Sends words, scribbles, images, rants to cagac.ca@gmail.com Please put Creativity in the subject line.