They're baaaaack, those evil, good for nothing spawn of Satan.

Go ahead and laugh, to you they look like harmless ladybugs, but to me they are The Creepy Crawlies That Will Not Go Away, an organic gardening experiment gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Just like the South Park kids want to "Blame Canada" me, I want to blame Vermont for my woes.

See, years ago they decided to release a special kind of ladybug as a way of controlling aphids, a common plant pest that plagues organic gardeners. And it worked, but ... nobody thought to ask what would eat the ladybugs.

The short answer to that: hardly anything.

See, the problem is that when these little bits of bug badness sense danger they release a whiff of very pungent gas. I know that you're saying to yourself, "But Marn, these are itty bitty bugs, how much gas could they release?"

Let me put it to you this way--if a hamster released as much gas for its size as a lady bug does, Saddam Hussein would have been threatening to load his biological warheads with farting hamsters, and brought the world to its knees.

So now, because nothing will eat these evil creatures, we're in the middle of a veritable ladybug plague with no end in sight.

Every fall the bugs look for a protected place to winter over--hollow trees, under leaves, and hey, why lookie there--A LOG CABIN!

Freakin' CLOUDS of these evil bug creatures swept out of the woods today and up into every crack of our house. The place was literally crawling with them. Over the next few weeks they will gradually work their way indoors and I will vacuum up 25 or 30 of them each day right through 'til spring when the rest that hibernated in our roof leave for the woods.

Did I mention the lovely perfume that wafts out of the back of my vacuum and delicately scents the air in my home? Yep. Concentrated lady bug farts. You urban folks think you know about air pollution? Hah, I spit on YOUR air pollution.

If bad guys ever break into our house I'm all set, I've got a biological weapon right at my fingertips. I'll just turn on the vacuum and point the exhaust at them.

They'll never know what hit 'em, eh.