Your children are gone and who can blame them

We all know from our nursery rhymes that being a ladybird carries certain lifestyle risks. I can now reveal where all Mrs Ladybird's children went when her home burnt down.

They moved in with us.

The first hint came before Christmas when the Boy opened one of the sash windows in his room and about 50 ladybirds fell out. Apparently that's how they get through the winters – they cluster together in a nice, secluded spot where they're unlikely to be disturbed. (Which in the case of the Boy's windows is a pretty safe bet; they weren't to know he was down to his last oxygen molecule and we’re pretty fussy about that sort of thing.) I’m afraid we weren’t the most hospitable of hosts.

But since then they've been everywhere and we must have got through a couple hundred more, no exaggeration. Every morning we would open the curtains and find a dozen or so crawling over the frames. Ladybirds on their own present no problems and they're great for eating aphids, apparently. But when they crash land on your computer as you type, or in your ear as you sleep, or your food as you eat, or your hair as you … hell, as you anything – that's another matter. A couple of weeks ago patience ran out and I treated them to my own little atrocity with a can of Raid. Since then their numbers have been down to manageable levels – one or two every one or two days.

And today a new variable has entered the equation. In the hall on the way to breakfast I found what I thought at first was the remains of a ladybird suicide pact – three of the little critters lying close together. Then I thought maybe it was a ladybird freefall stunt team all with a simultaneous equipment failure. In fact it turned out to be just one ladybird, lying dead between its two separated wing cases.

I could only find one explanation. This ladybird had exploded in midair. Either al-Qaeda are getting really vindictive or there’s a new predator on the range. A night fighter, radar equipped, that closes in along invisible beams and takes them down with a quick burst of the 20mm Hispanos.

It’s evolution, I tell you. Nature always finds a way.