Buy and Release
Some sporting fisherman will catch a fish, carefully remove the hook, and then release the fish back into the water. They call this mode of fishing “Catch and Release”. This was a foreign concept for me — I always ate the fish I caught. While some fisherman of this persuasion might actually not like eating fish (or preparing it for consumption), I think many of these fisherman would argue that it is more simply a matter of sport, and not killing. One such fisherman once told me that he caught the same fish multiple times; they had a special relationship, those two!
This week’s photo deals with a similar concept. However, instead of catching, it is more a matter of buying and then releasing. And, instead of fish, we’re talking about lady bugs.
Years ago, I went with my Mom to Builder’s Emporium (kind of a predecessor to Lowe’s or Home Depot). While walking up and down the aisles, she spotted boxes of live lady bugs for sale. As soon as I saw what she saw, and realized that she was actually contemplating buying a box, I was instantly struck with a unique combination of awe and utter hilarity. Of course, these lady bugs were packaged for the purpose of controlling aphids — and we had aphids on our rose bushes. I think the basic idea is that you buy these lady bugs, release them by your roses, and then they will immediately go to your roses, consume the aphids, and then demonstrate slavish loyalty by sticking around for the next aphids to come to their newly conquered territory. In my mind, I envisioned an entirely different scenario which takes many fewer words to describe: you open the box and they fly away. I tried to convince my Mom that this was likely to happen, but she prevailed, bought the lady bugs and brought them home. The moment of truth arrived shortly thereafter, and I wasn’t about to miss this for anything. She opened the box near an aphid-afflicted rose bush. With great haste and enthusiasm, the lady bugs evacuated their commercial prison and, in a red-black cloud, flew up, up, and away until they were totally dispersed and out of our yard. The experience was a little like watching a prized helium-filled balloon accidentally escape your grip and ascend hopelessly out of reach and slowly out of sight. They never even noticed the oh-so-tempting rose bush we put before them. It happened pretty much as I had envisioned back at the store, and I laughed so hard that I hopped up and down for a moment, and then fell to my knees and almost peed my pants; my eyes were watering and the muscles in my scalp began to cramp. I don’t think I had ever laughed so hard before (and probably not many times since).
Fast forward 35 years to the present. My wife and I were at Home Depot and happened to spot mesh bags of live lady bugs for sale. The memory came back to me instantly and with great detail and fondness. I couldn’t pass-up the opportunity to recreate the hilarious scene from my childhood, so we bought a bag. Science’s understanding of lady bugs may well have increased over the past several years; printed on the bag were instructions to “mist” the bag once per day (which makes sense, especially in our dry, desert climate), and to slow them down a little by putting them in the refrigerator (we confirmed the result, approximating the prescribed process by holding the mesh bag in front of the car’s air conditioner). We knew of no aphids in our yard, but then aphid-control was not our motivation. My wife opened the mesh bag and encouraged our little friends to venture forth to (yes) a rose bush. She then put some of these red bugs onto our Red Buds. There was no great demonstration of contempt by flying away en masse, but they crawled away and flew away slowly and surely. Within a few minutes, relatively few of our little warriors were to be found.
It was sporting; we bought and released. It was satisfying; these bugs were imprisoned by slave-traders, and we bought their freedom. I don’t know if we’ll ever see any of these lady bugs again (or, if we do, how we’ll recognize that the bugs we see are even the ones we bought). It just doesn’t matter. However, if I had an aphid problem, I wouldn’t hesitate buying another bag or two of these critters and releasing them in the middle of our yard with the hope of keeping them close by and working (eating) for us. And, I’d make sure that my kids were watching — who knows what stories they would tell many years down the line?
Photo of the Week
2007.08.20
