Late Thursday afternoon, the newly arrived pest-control troops swarmed over Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. In their flashy red and black jackets, they fanned out among the flowers and shrubs, searching for aphids, mites and other threats to the greenery at the heavily landscaped campus of Manhattan’s most famous middle-income rental complex.
Their intention was to eat them.
The troops were ladybugs. Some 720,000 of them were released by groundskeepers at the complex, which occupies 18 square blocks northeast of First Avenue and East 14th Street. The ladybugs are part of an effort by the complex’s new owners, Tishman Speyer, to move away from using chemical insecticides to protect the plants and grass that cover 40 acres there.
720,000, that’s a lot of ladies. The company supplying the ladybugs, Planet Natural is host to hundreds of other natural pesticides, fertilizers and other garden supplies. Other predatory bugs recommended/supplied by Planet Natural (since we just love bugs around here):
Scary, right? I’d be scared if I met one of these my size in the garden.
[NYT]
did you know that in england they call ladybugs ladybirds? weird huh, well it turns out that over here all the birds migrated early and are neglecting to eat the lady”birds” cuz they got the seasons ass backwards and are prolly flyingsomewhere near finland right now… but yea, so theres been like invasions of ladybugs in parts of london like in stoke newington, where some friends live, they had lady bugs everywhere, it was on some alfred hitchcock type mass hysteria. it just makes you think, huh, about all this crazy shit thats happening in our lifetime, and people still try to deny that we’re feckin up the world around us. shit is critical.
yah man, crazy. sadly though, not that surprising. migratory patterns world-wide are alll whacky. will have to do some investigatory research into the specifics. ladybirds…i like that. my mom always told me it is lucky when a ladybug lands on you, so hopefully your friends in stoke newton are in for some massively good times ahead. peace triz.
yeah! I have to second the hitchock reference. At first my cousin’s wife kept on talking about how cute they were, for insects. then when they started crawling throgh the windowpane and perching above her bed by the dozens, she quickly ran out and got to cans of something toxic and ran around the house like a mad woman kill kill killing.
it was hilarious, and a little disturbing.