Saddest thing I've ever seen

As some of you may already know, at some point last year, a ladybird mum laid her eggs some place in my room. Consequently, my room is filled with the perpetual flutter and spatter of ladybird babies and adolescents flying around and bumping into things, preferably my paper lamp and preferably at night.

Their lives are short and, as I may say, eventless, as not even MY roam boasts enough organic bric-a-brac to keep them entertained a long time, let alone fed.

Most of the time they die quietly and unnoticed, only when they've been sitting in the same spot for all too long and their wings start dropping of you realise that they're actually deceased.

Most of the time.

As it happens, I have just finished springcleaning my room. Hoover in one hand, my shisha in the other, I came across a small group of ladybirds. They were all dead, sitting next to the heater and huddled together as if trying to put off the inevitable. Their heads were tucked together as if seeking comfort in each other's company in the last minutes of their tiny lives. It looked to me like one of those elephant graveyards, only much smaller and heart warmingly polka dotted.


This wee death scenario gave me the same feeling that these good old german "children's songs" have always given me, you know, the ones where Heitschi Bumbeitschi's mother has died and is waiting for him in heaven or the other one with the beetle that is to fly to Pomerania but he can't because it has fuckin' burnt down and everybody has been raped and killed by the Russians, so tough luck! (Well, the song doesn't actually say that thing about the Russians, but that's what's written between the lines.)

I was shaken to the core and couldn't go on cleaning but went for some ricecrackers.
After that I came back and sucked the ex-ladybirds into the hoover.

End of story.