Tiny Harbingers of Halloween, Ladybugs Take Hitchcockian Turn

Heading to another job, he drove through a cloud of ladybugs so dark and creepy it reminded him of a horror movie.

"It was something out of Alfred Hitchcock," he said. "You could barely see."

His family did not escape unscathed, either. One ladybug stained a new pink blouse, and another left its yellow mark on a lampshade, LeMarr's wife, Susan, said.

"I can't tell you how irritated I am," she said.

Business has been plenty good for pest control companies in Maryland, too. Steve Goldberg of Infestation Control in Rockville said a home he visited had so many ladybugs on the floor that he could hear the crunching beneath his feet. "It was like wall-to-wall carpeting of ladybugs," he said.

In most cases, however, the bugs will just retreat or die without any treatment or can be vacuumed into oblivion.

Terry spent Thursday afternoon sweeping up the thousands of corpses left behind by LeMarr's insecticide treatment, dusting them off a bookshelf and a windowsill, leaving a faint odor and an orange smear on the glass.

She remembers when she was introduced to the swarms a few years ago, when she thought of ladybugs as lucky and sweet. When she found a cluster on the floor, she would carefully sweep the bugs into a shoebox to release outside.

Not anymore, she said.

"Now we step on them, vacuum them, spray them, whatever," she said. "We destroy them with a vengeance."