Green Report

What could be more ecologically-correct than colourful coleoptera munching its way through mouthfuls of awful aphis?  Over a century ago, we are told, long before the dreaded petro-chemical industry had inflicted calamity upon humankind, there was the Vedalia Beetle, Rodolia cardinalis.  This predaceous ladybug from Australia adores the cottony-cushiony scale, Icerya purchasi, which infests citrus trees.  In 1885 it seemed the California citrus industry was doomed.  Fred Allen didn’t quite have it right when he said, “California is a great place… if you happen to be an orange”.  Enter Albert Koebele, an entomologist with the United States Department of Agriculture.  A budget of $2000 was established and off he went to Melbourne’s International Exposition.  No bugs there but officially bureaucrats were not allowed to travel abroad while employed by the USDA, so he visited under an appropriations bill.  Koebele found the Vedalia Beetle and sent some back (poor things) to L.A.  There they were reared and released onto infested, tent-enclosed trees.  People came from all over the state to collect the ladybeetle in little boxes.  There was even $500 left over from Koebele’s travel expenses.  The growers gave a gold watch to Koebele, and diamond earrings were given to his wife.  The citrus industry was saved.  Never again did the California citrus growers find themselves in such a squeeze. 

Now millions of the little red insects are sold every season.  Several years past, Mount Pleasant Cemetery used them to control pests in its trees, shrubs and other plants rather than rely on spraying, whether with chemical or “natural” sprays.  A hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake -the only town in the world ever to celebrate Shaw annually- released ladybeetles indoors and posted notices in all its rooms explaining this to its guests.  Reportedly, the latter were as delighted as the coleoptera.

Then disaster struck.

Last fall in Louisville, Kentucky, physician Hobert Pence, a respected allergist, reported a grim case.  His patient was a man of good health until his southern Indiana home was overrun by…. ladybeetles.  Thousands of them.  He now suffers from such severe asthma that he must be treated with medication twice a day.

Dr. Pence notes -not surprisingly- that the ladybeetle is becoming more and more common in North America.  In fact, Sybil Carmichael wrote to the Toronto Field Naturalist Newsletter that in mid-October 1999 swarms of ladybeetles covered the windows and walls of her house.  This continued for several days, but the numbers diminished as time passed.

We can only trust that Greenpeace’s Peter Tobin and similar civic-minded, self-appointed citizens will rise to the occasion.  What would have happened if Mrs. Carmichael or her husband turned out to be allergic to the now-dreaded ladybeetle?  But there has only been one allergic reaction, you say, and that in Indiana.  This is one too many, must be the response.   After all, genetically modified crops have not caused allergies in a single person, and look what the eco-terrorists have done with that.  Ontario’s native Mississauga Rattlesnake has killed only some half-dozen people in two hundred years, and look what we think of any snake, rattling or silent, here in Ontario today.  Come on Peter, let us hear you organize a Campaign Against Coleoptera urging everyone to get out there and Lambaste the Ladybeetle.  But do so quickly, before some innocent Ontarian suffers an asthma attack from this now-nefarious beastie.

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