{"id":20958,"date":"2018-04-21T10:26:21","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T14:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=20958"},"modified":"2018-04-21T10:30:37","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T14:30:37","slug":"162421-asian-lady-beetles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2018\/04\/21\/162421-asian-lady-beetles\/","title":{"rendered":"162,421 Asian lady beetles"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Harmonia<\/a>

Harmonia axyridis, the multi-colored Asian lady beetle, as you rarely see it–all by itself. Photo: Joshua Mayer<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

It would be nice to sing like Edith Piaf, “Je ne regrette rien,” (I regret nothing), but if it’s true, it’s only true for a few. Most of us carry some burdens that pop out at random, that are seemingly immune to forgetting. No need to get into particulars; it hardly matters what.<\/p>\n

I was thinking about that as I emptied the vacuum cleaner reservoir of the 162,421 Asian lady beetles I vacuumed off the windows and walls of my house in the last week.<\/p>\n

Though I now number that necessity among my regrets and will probably spend my next few lifetimes as a Venus fly trap, there was a certain similarity\u00a0between their boneheaded and relentless emergence, their seemingly pointless meanderings, and the general uselessness of meditating on lapses of the past.<\/p>\n

\n

Regret is like a lady beetle<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Where you go to look out the sunny window
\nthey mill about; when you look at yourself
\nin the bathroom mirror they cluster and crawl.
\nOnly you know what you’ve done to deserve them.<\/p>\n

So you get out the vacuum cleaner once again
\nand hoover them out of the cracks, pane by pane
\nworking from south side to west, not neglecting
\nthe ceilings, the lampshades, the doors.<\/p>\n

But already new ones emerge from the walls
\nout of nowhere, some bottomless reservoir.
\nTheir stink lingers in the air. They startle you
\nafloat in the water glass, a tickle on the neck.<\/p>\n

So you get out the vacuum cleaner once again
\nand hoover them out of the cracks, pane by pane
\nworking from south side to west, not neglecting
\nthe ceilings, the lampshades, the doors.<\/p>\n

But already new ones emerge from the walls\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It would be nice to sing like Edith Piaf, “Je ne regrette rien,” (I regret […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20958"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20960,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20958\/revisions\/20960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}