Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Favor returned.

On Sunday afternoon, I was tossing something in the yard waste bin when I noticed a very small ladybug being very still on the rim of the bin. She was like half the size of a full-grown ladybug, and didn't even have any spots yet. I thought she'd maybe gotten trapped under the lid, and hadn't had anything to eat for a while. She was awfully still. I wasn't sure she wasn't dead.

I put my finger over to her and she stirred a little, then climbed onto my hand. I thought I would put her in the melon patch, but when I lowered her towards one of the big fuzzy leaves, she climbed further up my hand. It seemed a pretty clear rejection of the melon patch.

So then I took her over to the tomato vines. I wasn't sure if she'd be into those either, but there are lots of plants in the garden, so I wasn't super worried. I moved my hand towards a tomato leaf, and before I'd even gotten all the way there, she sort of leaped from my hand onto the leaf and immediately disappeared over its edge to the other side of it. I waited a second, I guess wondering if that was a bid for privacy, and then peeked at the other side of the leaf. She had immediately caught an aphid and was eating it.

That was pretty much the fastest I've ever had a favor returned.

1 comment:

Mayumi said...

Ahhh! I love this. What a sweet little gem of a story. :)