The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug

Little Mrs. Ladybug was a worker. Nobody could deny that. To be sure, she had to stop now and then to talk to her neighbors, because Mrs. Ladybug dearly loved a bit of gossip. At the same time there wasn't anyone in Pleasant Valley that helped Farmer Green more than she did. She tried her hardest to keep the trees in the orchard free from insects.

Some of her less worthy neighbors were known sometimes to say with a sniff, "If[Pg 2] Mrs. Ladybug didn't enjoy her work she wouldn't care about helping Farmer Green. If she hadn't such a big appetite she'd stop to chat even more than she does now."

That might seem an odd remark—unless one happened to know how Mrs. Ladybug freed the orchard of the tiny pests that attacked it. The truth of the matter was this: Mrs. Ladybug ate the little insects that fed upon the fruit trees. Her constant toil meant that she devoured huge numbers of Farmer Green's enemies.

Goodness knows what Farmer Green would have done had Mrs. Ladybug and all her family lost their taste for that kind of fare. The orchard might have been a sorry sight.

Perhaps it was only to be expected that Mrs. Ladybug should have little patience with folk that seemed lazy. She thought that Freddie Firefly wasted too much of his time dancing in the meadow at night. She considered Buster Bumblebee, the Queen's son, to be a useless idler, dressed in his black velvet and gold. Having heard that Daddy Longlegs was a harvestman, she urged him to go to work for Farmer Green at harvest time. And as for the beautiful Betsy Butterfly, Mrs. Ladybug found all manner of fault with her.