Now that "ladybug" is a curse word around here...

The flies were so bad this summer. Our poor animals were just plagued with them. In fact, the chickens would actually sit on the cow's back and eat the flies right off of her. We began milking at 5:30am in order to try to get her milked before the flies became too bad. And I tried all the "natural" remedies for flies that I could find...nothing seemed to work. But they were mainly outside. I didn't have to deal with them day and night.

Then the weather started to cool off. And for some reason, the flies felt their situation would be improved by moving indoors. Let me just say that I have come to realize something: Our house is certainly not airtight. I believe that the majority were coming in through an attic vent, but once inside, they would hang out around any light that happened to be on and the windows. The windows were, at some times, so covered with flies that you couldn't actually swat just one fly. They were so crowded you would always get 3 or 4.

We became prisoners. We had to be very careful about leaving any light on, especially in the evening. If a bedroom light was on, the flies would congregate and the poor soul whose room it was would be harassed by buzzing for quite some time as they tried to go to sleep.

And so I finally resorted to putting up fly tape. In the house. It was so gross and ugly, but I was desperate. I just wanted some peace! And in just 2 days, I had caught 87 flies on it. Eighty-seven. That is just in one room and does not count the endless swatting of flies that went on in other rooms.
The flies began to leave about a week or 2 ago. I was just starting to breathe a sigh of relief. And then we went to Omaha for the day last Wednesday. When we came home, the inside of our house was covered in ladybugs.

Oh, the torture. They literally showed up one day in swarms. I would spend my evenings vacuuming them up from the light fixtures, ceilings and especially the corners where they pile up, and then taking them outside to drown in a bucket. And just so you know, these are actually Asian beetles, ladybug look-alikes, with absolutely no redeeming qualities at all. And they bite. There would be usually about 100 that I vacuum up and the most infuriating part about is that I would come back in from the drowning and there would be a good 10 more inside already. I was waiting with bated breath for a good hard freeze to get rid of these little boogers.

We should've had that freeze last night. If all goes well, that will be the end of that little torture session. Unfortunately, I am told that the first really nice day, they'll all come back. Are you kidding me? So here I am, wishing for a bitter cold winter? That's a bit unusual. It's a good thing I have those pregnancy hormones to keep me warm.