Daddy Strikes Again

“Hey! Where’s Lady?” asks Antonella, speaking of her pet ladybug, which had been residing inside a juice glass on top of the fireplace mantel. That is, until I threw it out earlier that day.

She hadn’t mentioned or even looked at the darn thing in a week. Now, as we’re entertaining some friends on a Saturday night, Antonella suddenly remembers her six-legged pet and begins to comb the house for it.

“Lady! Laaaaaaady!” she calls, doing a room-to-room search. I get a sick feeling in my stomach as I think back to that moment earlier in the day when, just before releasing the bug back into the wild, I debated about first consulting my daughter. Nah, I thought. She’ll never miss it.

“Oh, Laaaaaaady! Where are you?”

Then again…

“Antonella,” I say. “Come here. Daddy has something to tell you.” My wife turns and looks at me, wide-eyed and concerned. I then explain to my daughter how I freed her ladybug earlier in the day while she was napping. “It hadn’t had food or water in a week, honey. It was dying.” Of course, even if it somehow managed not to be eaten by some winter-starved bird, the bug had most certainly frozen to death by this point.

Cue the tears. My daughter falls into my wife’s arms, crushed that her father has betrayed her and cast her beloved Lady out in the merciless wilderness, i.e., the backyard, to fend for itself. I try to justify my actions, but my daughter is inconsolable.

Bread for Lady the Ladybug

Cassie jumps in and tries to diffuse the situation. “How about if we leave some bread out on the back porch for it?” she says.

This momentarily calms by hysterical first born. “Yeah!” says Antonella. “And then we can catch her and bring her back inside.” And so the two of them head off to the kitchen—my daughter with new-found hope, my wife giving me the familiar what-in-the-world-were-you-thinking look.

Later that evening I am sitting on the living room floor working on my laptop when I notice movement on the carpet next to me. Unbelievably, crawling right next to me is a ladybug! Could it possibly be Lady? Who gives a crap? I’m saved! I immediately scoop it up and seal it inside another juice glass, covering the opening with a piece of wax paper and a rubber band.

The next morning I can’t wait to tell my daughter that her beloved Lady has returned. But as I pick up the glass, something’s missing: the ladybug. Then I notice that I had failed to properly seal the opening, creating a means of escape.

Daddy strikes again.

Remarkably, my daughter is disappointed but upbeat about the situation. “Well,” she says, “at least it’s back inside the house now.”

“Yeah!” I say, impressed with her mature optimism. “That’s what really matters.” I just hope she won’t want me to try to find it.

“Let’s try to find it!” she says.

Nella and her Ladybug

Despite a desperate all-morning search, the new Lady is nowhere to be found, and I realize now that I will have to Google “ladybugs for sale” and place my first-ever online insect purchase. Then, the next morning, my wife discovers a ladybug crawling on the dining room wall. Again, she puts the bug in a glass, this time with some food (a leaf from a house plant and an orange slice) and some water, and makes sure to seal it in. But when she presents it to Antonella, my daughter changes her mind. “I don’t want her to be dead,” she says. “I want her to sleep on the wall. Then we can find her that way, and she won’t die.”

How can you argue with that logic?

So what did we learn here? And by “we” I mean “me.” We learned that it is never wise to release your child’s pet into the wild without their consent.

We also learned that we may need an exterminator.

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