Ladybugs

Merry G

Lady bugs are pretty. The ladybug's favorite food is aphids. Gardeners like ladybugs because ladybugs eat aphids and aphids eat plants in gardens.

Boy ladybugs find girls by using their antennae. The boys know they found a girl ladybug by her smell which must be like ladybug perfume. Ladybugs like to live in parks and garden because there are other ladybugs that they can mate with and then they lay their eggs. After the mother ladybug lays the eggs, a week later she dies.

Ladybugs like to lay their eggs in gardens ,so when their eggs hatch, the larva can eat when it is hungry. It eats about thirty aphids in one day.

When the larva is very fat, it finds a stem and uses the sticky glue from its back to glue it to a stem. Then after two hours, it's skin starts to split and the pupa shows through. The larva's old skin is still attached to the back of the pupa. Then after one day, its shell turns hard and then the pupa skin has black spots over it. It stays very still and is getting ready to turn into an adult ladybug.

After five days the lady bug pushes as hard as it can until the shell spits open. Then it struggles out head first. After the ladybugs crawls to a safe spot, it spreads its wings out so they can dry too.After the ladybug is dry, the ladybug has to wait twelve hours until it gets all its spots.

After the ladybug gets all its spots, it waits for a warm sunny day. It fins a piece of grass, then it spreads out its case for its wings and beats its wings up and down very fast and flies.

When summer is over and it comes to late fall, the ladybug finds a pile of leaves and sleeps through the winter. The next spring it starts all over again.

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