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The ladybugs came at us from over the low hills, a ground and air swarm in red and black that had fixed a cliché in my mind - the little creatures covered everything like a blanket.

The summer had been an unusual one already, with funky weather patterns and unexplained growth problems in the field crops. I was between school years, a college boy working the fields on my uncle's smallish farm. The corn stopped growing about ten days before the swarm arrived. It wasn't dying - we saw no signs of disease - it just stopped growing. There was concern over an altered nitrogen fertilizer regimen my uncle had been following that year, but that didn't explain the sudden and extreme retardation of the growth cycle.

A week later, our well water began to taste and smell heavily of iron. My uncle called a man in town to have him come out and test the well. They'd been getting calls from all across the county with the same complaint, and we'd have to wait.

One morning I saw a small cloud of Asian beetles - the orange and black insects that look so much like ladybugs, but aren't ladylike at all. They tend to cycle heavily in spring and fall, not in mid-summer, when they seem to almost hibernate. What the hell were they doing massing in late June? I remembered using a mix of dish detergent and water in a spray bottle to suffocate Asian beetles. You don't want to squash Asian beetles - they release a stink which stays in the nostrils a while.

The swarm came on a Sunday. I remember thinking to myself, 'How Biblical.' The ladybugs swarmed the corn fields. They covered the tractors and barn and equipment sheds. They painted the farmhouse in a fluttering red and black.

My uncle chose a Biblical method for trying to do them in - he said we'd fight them with fire. He told me of several five-gallon metal gasoline cans stored in the cinder-block equipment shed near the main barn, We ran to the shed, and I stole a look across the big yard to the house to see if my aunt was okay. She stood at the kitchen window, her face seeming to melt in horror at what now blanketed her beloved farm property. Her mouth worked silently to me, if not to her.

I turned to focus on reaching the shed. I couldn't see what gasoline would do to help us against so many ladybugs, but my uncle told me to trust him.

I should have stopped him.

He'd gone mad too, so it seemed. I didn't catch this until it was too late, and gasoline was running down the driveway from the shed toward the house. Soon both cans were empty, nothing remaining but fumes. I froze as he sprinted to the house while pulling a disposable lighter from his shirt pocket.

They died together. I could have stopped him - but my mind was infested as well.