A fact that set Olivia into a fit of crying and wailing, holding her head in her hands. “Yes! You see how much bad luck that is! And you know, it will only continue unless… well, I’ve just got to capture a ladybug, I’ve GOT to!” 

“A ladybug?” Ellie squinted, wondering what a ladybug had to do with Olivia falling off a stool and breaking her nose.

Olivia stopped wailing momentarily to look at Ellie. “Why yes!” she said in quite a matter of fact way. Honestly, for as smart as Ellie was, sometimes she needed quite a lot of explanation.  “Everyone knows, er maybe not everyone (no offense), but most of us know that if you have a ladybug about you, you will have good luck. So really, there is no other way to stop this - I must find a ladybug.”

As you grow to know Ellie like I do, you’ll come to understand that she is quite marvelous about  not pointing out the silliness in Olivia’s ideas, if in fact they seem silly, as this one did. In fact, she is quite aware that sometimes the silliest of ideas turn out to be the best ones. Though honestly she couldn’t imagine how that could be true about this one. But as she stared at her friend’s hopeful face, still glistening with tears, she didn’t have the heart to point that out. 

So instead, she got up, smoothed the dirt from her dress, and said “I guess I do know something about catching bugs, well, butterflies, and this seems to be the same thing.” She reached around the side of the playhouse for her butterfly net, which she promptly raised in the air and began to swing around. “You see, you wave it like this, and the bugs, well, they just fly right in!”

Olivia wiped her eyes, staring at the marvelous contraption. “Really? They fly RIGHT IN?” Ohh, she thought, that’s exactly what she needed - a marvelous magical ladybug catcher! It was too good to be true but yet here it was! She grabbed the net and squealed, swinging it around, rejoicing in the swishing noise it made as it sliced through the forest air. Oh, she KNEW Ellie would help - she could just see herself, bouncing through the meadow, racing this way and that, and swinging the net which would no doubt catch hundreds of ladybugs! Why, this would do more than erase her bad luck… it would bring enough good luck to last a lifetime! 

​

And so Olivia bid Ellie goodbye, and raced to the meadow, panting heavily and trying to hold on to her poor broken nose as she hopped and bounced through the fields. She looked up into the horizon, where the setting sun created a silhouette of the meadow flowers, dotted with a swirling red and black cloud of… none other than ladybugs!  

Olivia gasped and clutched the net, racing around the field, sending flutters and tutters of ladybugs wherever she lept. But each time she swung her net wildly into what seemed to be the center of the fluttery crowd, the ladybugs dispersed. “Gooseberries!” she exclaimed, hopping and jumping from here to there, to and fro around the meadow. When the pain in her nose grew too great, not to mention her bandage had fallen off many hops ago, Olivia stopped and flopped down in the meadow, laying her head back against the grass and staring up at the sky. Her chest heaved up and down and she felt tears prick her eyes again. It was no use… the net simply didn’t work. Why in fact, it seemed to actually drive them away! How could that be?

Olivia stood up slowly and shook the grass off of her, dragging the net behind her as she made it back to her little red house in the woods. Suddenly tired, she could think of nothing better than a piece of thimbleberry pie and cup of warm tea. She watched her brown feet trod one at a time on the forest floor beneath her, visualizing the delicious treat, when she stopped suddenly and shrieked “Eureka!” Which is what she always said when she has a stupendous idea… which this undoubtedly was. “I will lure a ladybug with pie, and then trap him in a box! No one can resist thimbleberry pie - not even a ladybug!”

​

And that is exactly what Olivia did. Instead of enjoying the warm pie herself, she ran home and  set it out on her patio table next to the broken teacup that she would use as a trap. And she sat and waited. And waited. Until one by one, a long line of ladybugs crept up to the pie, took a nibble of the sweet treat, and walked past, over, and through the trap that she had set! Dismayed, Olivia grabbed the teacup and turned it over, only to see a small hole from where a piece had chipped away when it fell from the cupboard. Olivia flopped her head in her hands and wailed. Now not only was she sore and tired, she had also lost her thimbleberry pie and STILL had no ladybugs! It was all getting to be more than a bunny could bear.

That night, as Olivia was brushing her long bunny ears and looking at herself in her dresser mirror, she had a thought. An idea actually. “It’s genius!” Olivia exclaimed,

turning her face this way and that, and then wrapping a red scarf around her head and examining herself in the mirror. “Perhaps to catch a ladybug, I must look like a ladybug! And then they would think I was one of them and would walk right to me…. at which point I could catch one and finally be rid of my bad luck!!” Olivia was so pleased with herself that she spun around in the mirror, waving the red scarf behind her like a train. Hooray! She would finally catch a ladybug, she just knew it!!!

​

The next morning, as soon as the sun rose, Olivia darted out of bed, her head filled with dreams of how her luck would soon change! Today was the day!! She raced to her kitchen, gobbling up a bowl of berries and cup of thimbleberry tea, then darted to her garden shed, grabbed a big red sack filled with tools, shook out the contents, and went to work. SNIP! SNIP!, went her scissors as she hurriedly cut holes in the giant sack for her arms and legs. SWISH! SWISH! went her black paintbrush as she quickly painted giant black circles all over the sack, all the while exclaiming, “One more dot!” and “Yes, this is sure to do the trick!” When she was finally done, she stepped into the sack, pulled it up around her shoulders and grinned, extremely pleased with herself. “What a marvelous disguise!!! I am certain that I look JUST like a ladybug!!!”

And without a moment’s hesitation, she gathered the sack around her and ran.  Over the hills, through the woods, around the beach, and into the ladybug meadow where she sat, huffing and puffing, and waited. She clutched her repaired teacup trap beneath the sack and sat very still. Maybe too still in light of how tired she was from all of the cutting and painting and running she’d done so far this morning, because as she closed her eyes to concentrate on sitting even more quietly, she slowly… but surely…drifted off to sleep. 

I have to pause here to point out what a curious site this was. A giant bunny in a painted red and black sack, laying in the middle of a cloud of ladybugs, most of whom are pointing and buzzing and swirling around her. While a few were either afraid of the giant red sack or curious about why a red sack would have such grand ears, there wasn’t a single one who mistook our sweet and diligent Olivia for a fellow ladybug. In fact, most just giggled and flew on by. 

But before you feel sorry for poor Olivia, as I know I did at first, I want to reassure you that if you look closely, you’ll see that there is one tiny ladybug who has stopped to land on Olivia. Not to fall into her trap of course, which she was by now cuddling like a stuffed animal as she snored gently in the grass, but instead, to perch silently on her chest, waiting for her to awake.
 

And he waited and waited. Silently staring at the giant bunny who had been acting so crazy - first running in circles waving her net, then hiding behind a teacup with her big bunny ears poking straight up as she watched them dine on her treat of thimbleberry pie. How odd that she hadn’t joined them! But everyone knows ladybugs are a social sort, and perhaps bunnies just weren’t the same. He of course didn’t know, because he had never met a bunny before… that is before today. But the way she laid in the field dressed like a giant rock concerned him. He wanted to make sure she was okay. And so he waited, because that was…. well…. That was the sort of Bug he was.

When he had almost given up on waiting, Olivia opened her eyes. Slowly at first, then flinging them open and sitting up so quickly that Bug flew off of her chest and landed on the tip of a flower nearby. “Whoa!” he exclaimed, clinging to a petal as it swayed in the breeze. 

“I did it!” squealed Olivia, jumping up and down, grabbing her teacup, and placing the little bug inside so that he could just barely peek over the rim. “I caught a ladybug!!! Woo hoo!” But as she stared at the little bug, she noticed something troubling. He didn’t look lucky at all… in fact, he looked…… sad. Olivia’s face fell, for she never had considered how the ladybug would feel once she caught him. “Hi little guy…” she whispered, holding the teacup up where she could see him.

Bug blinked at the two big brown eyes staring at him over the teacup.  Oliva closed her eyes tight, muttering “Gooseberries!,” then crouched down on the ground and gently tipped the teacup to shake the little bug out. But instead of flying away, he turned to look up at her.