Most of you probably think ladybirds are kind of cute – or at the very worst, the least offensive of all the country’s insect population.
But, equally, you probably haven’t come across a swarm of these infected ladybirds, the likes of which infested a woman’s home just outside of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire.
Margaret Yescombe, 35, reported the invasion of hundreds of the flying insects, who pelted against her windows for two days straight.
Yescombe described the ordeal as akin to a horror film, ‘like something out of Hitchcock’s The Birds.’
On her YouTube channel, the fashion videographer wrote:
The tap, tap, tap, tap, tap of them constantly hitting the windows like beetle snowflakes was weird and disconcerting, and I couldn’t open the windows as they were pouring in before I managed to close it the first day!
Some bugs managed to breach the cottage windows and swarmed inside Yescombe’s home.
The spotted black and red bugs are known as Harlequin Ladybirds have been swarming around houses in Britain, trying to find warm spots for hibernation as they swoop in from America and Asia.
To make matters worse, they pose a threat to our local ladybirds as the cannibalistic bugs carry an STI called Laboulbeniales fungal disease, making them about as vexing as their namesake (the re-imagined Margot Robbie version, obviously).
Now, if this all sounds like it’s from the playbook of Donald Trump’s Racist Rhetoric 1o1, you’d be alarmingly right.
According to The Guardian, Harlequin Ladybirds are the UK’s fasted growing invading species.
At least the animal kingdom is just as fucked up as humankind. We can take some solace in that.
A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.