The Ladybug

I can hear the sound of the leaves rustling against each other in the strong autumnal breeze. I somehow picked just the right spot to sit and write that I can catch the wind face-on. It gently rushes past my ears, and I see more golden-yellow leaves slowly drop and nestle themselves into the ground. It is a sunny day, with enormous white clouds billowing through the clear blue sky. There is a slight bustle of students, on their way to their respective classes and various appointments, and their chatter mixes melodically with the breeze. As the quad empties out, I am left with the sun beating the tree behind me, and the easy shuffle of leaves dragging themselves along the pavement. The trees are all in various states of undress; some have only just begun to turn, while others have turned completely and lost nearly all of their summer leaves. A large gold maple leaf falls into my lap from above my head, and I smile at it as the breeze re-directs it to join its fellows. There is a slight nip in the air as the large clouds pass over the sun, and I shiver until the brightness shows itself again.

I switch my position against the tree to better absorb the fleeting sunlight, and find that a black-speckled yellow ladybug has found a home on my leg. I lift my finger out to it; it tickles as it crawls up my hand while I am writing. Upon looking closer at it, I find that its wings seem to be crushed beneath its bent-in exoskeleton. It flexes them several times in vain, attempting to fly. The thin, black, transparent silk of the wings now protrude from beneath its crumpled golden exoskeleton, and it begins to trek around my hand again for some miniscule morsels to munch on. I examine her even more closely. She has nine spots on either side of her exoskeleton, in a series of four rows. Going all the way across her back, the rows align themselves with four, six, six, and two spots. One side perfectly mirrors the other, even down to the dents in the dome of her exoskeleton.

She’s a peculiar little thing, crawling contentedly back and forth along my thumb as I type, occasionally attempting, in vain, to flex her wings again. She crawls along on her six spindly little legs, occasionally using one of them to scratch another, or wipe her face, or something of that sort. Her curiosity then overwhelms her, and she begins to investigate the rest of my hand, my wrist, my palm, my fingers, all the while flexing her wings from beneath her exoskeleton. She perches herself in the space between my left pointer and middle fingers, and investigates my fingertip as I type. Content with investigating my pointer, she continues on to my middle, and sits just above the bend underneath my first knuckle. She makes typing a bit more than difficult, but it is nice to have a companion. She nestles back down in the skin between my two fingers and uses her middle legs to scratch her hind ones.

I look up and see that the quad has emptied itself. The ladybug continues her quest up and down my hand again, and I wonder if any other person here would have let her crawl around on them for as long as I have. She’s a gentle little thing, the only living thing that I’ve noticed being around on the quad for as long as I have. She sniffs her black crown around on my palm after carefully searching my pinky, and seems to nestle there, upside down in the lines of my palm as I type. I wonder, not for the first time, how her exoskeleton managed to become so bent-in. I hold my palm up to my eyes and watch her gently clean her face with a front leg, in much the same fashion that a cat would do. She rubs her antennae softly, and continues about her business, becoming accustomed to my left hand. She uses her middle and hind legs to clean the rest of herself in much the same way that she cleaned her face, and crawls back up and down my thumb.

I’ve moved several times to face the sun more, but she has been content; though, I realize, this could be in part because no part of my left hand was touching the ground. She flexes her wings again, and I place my left hand on the ground, knowing that she will crawl off when she is content to do so. After some time, she doesn’t seem to be moving more than a few inches around my palm. I put my right pointer finger out to her, but she doesn’t climb onto it. Instead, she brushes against the tip of my fingernail several times in a row, almost nuzzling me, trying to fix her dented exoskeleton. I can almost hear her sigh as she continues to trek around my left hand, so I pick up a leaf, the same color as her, and put its tip next to her. She crawls upon it, and I place it gently on the grass next to me. I look to my computer screen for a brief moment, and when I look back to the leaf I placed her on, she is gone from sight.

I marvel at the short time I spent with her. I never would have expected any creature of nature to have been content with my presence for long, let alone made a temporary home on my hand. I also never would have imagined that I would ever have made such a connection to as miniscule an insect with as simple a mind as a ladybug. I am puzzled by how feline she acted, and enchanted by the strange metaphor of her flight troubles and her disappearance. This ladybug has left a profound and stirring effect on me, and will not be forgotten.