My house has been invaded. The Batt Cave has been infested with little orange beetles with spots on their shells.

These creatures go by a number of names: Multicolored Asian Lady Beetles, Japanese Lady Beetles, Halloween Beetles and Ladybugs. No matter what alias they are using, they are a pain.

An old saying states that a person who finds a ladybug in the house will have good luck. If that is true, I should be buying lottery tickets by the gross.

These lady beetles are driving me crazy. They like to crawl onto my neck.

Entomologists say that these beetles do not bite &045; they merely pinch. Having been &uot;pinched&uot; by many of these insects, I have found that they are able to do a wonderful imitation of a bite and one that I find most believable.

I realize that the lady beetles do a lot of good. They eat harmful aphids like we eat potato chips. They are a good bug with a lot of bad habits. I do not want to kill them. I want to rehabilitate them. They come into the house because it is a warm place to spend the winter. They are like relatives when it comes to getting rid of them. They will not leave the house. If we swat them, they leave a nasty stain. If they are crushed, they produce an offensive smell &045; just like some relatives.

The ladybugs enjoy nothing more than joining me while I am working at my desk. They buzz around my desk lamp. Sometimes they land on my faithful canine companion who is resting comfortably on the floor nearby. My dog has discovered that the taste of a ladybug is not something she enjoys. Given the things that my dog includes in her diet, this gives some indication as to the nastiness of the flavor of a ladybug. My dog has to get up and shake herself in order to rid herself of the ladybug.

When not tormenting my dog, the favorite pastime of the ladybugs appears to be doing suicidal nose-dives into my cup of hot tea. As I mentioned earlier, they have an extremely offensive odor and it is one that they are only too willing to share with my hot beverage. I often miss their hara-kiri endeavors until I take a sip of my tea. I have my taste buds all set for the refreshing tea and am hit with the disgusting taste of ladybug. This ruins not only the tea, but my disposition as well.

My wife, The Queen B, not knowing that ladybugs are the cause, worries that some kind of vitamin deficiency is the reason for my crankiness. She used to give me Flintstones vitamins, but she quit when she found out that I was developing a crush on Betty Rubble. So now, each day she gives me four vitamins. There is a pink one, a white one, a gray one and a brown one. I do not know what kind they are, but I believe they contain all the essential vitamins A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y and, of course, Z. I take them because I love my wife and I am a dutiful husband. My wife gives them to me because she loves me and wants me to live a long time so she won’t have to open her own jars.

One day, my wife was gone and I was forced to reheat my own food in the microwave. The Queen B had left the four vitamins in a tiny little cup on the table to make sure that I would ingest them. I grabbed the vitamins and poured myself a glass of orange juice to wash them down. I tossed the vitamins into my mouth just as the phone rang. I positioned the vitamins under my tongue and answered the telephone. As I visited with the caller, I had the strangest sensation. It felt as though one of the vitamins was crawling on my tongue. I remembered thinking that those vitamins really worked. My taste buds had never been so alive. The activity on my tongue became so intense that I had to hang up the phone. I spit out the vitamins only to discover that the walking vitamin was a ladybug. Then the taste hit me.

Now each day, I take a ladybug along with my four vitamins. I find that having a foul tasting ladybug crawl around on my tongue gives me more energy than any vitamin ever could.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.