“Did you send me a fun package to get me through the rest of the semester,” my sister Jillian asked over the phone.

“Um, no. I wish I had, but I didn’t send you anything,” I told her.

“So you didn’t send me 1,500 ladybugs?”

I could hear two of Jillian’s friends laughing in the background — the culprits, I assumed. Apparently, two of her friends first tried to convince Jillian that our mom sent them and then tried to pin the bugs on me. I wish I had. It was pure genius. 1,500 ladybugs sent via air mail from California to a college girl’s dorm room.

As much as Jillian likes ladybugs, watching 1,500 squirming together in a mesh bag was too much for her. Many of them were flipped upside down, exposing their black bodies and thrashing legs.

“They’re climbing all over each other,” Jillian said, her voice reaching the level of oh-my-god-there-are-1,500-bugs-in-my-room. “I hope they’re not reproducing.”

“Of course they are. It’s a ladybug orgy. There’s never been so much sex in your room,” I told her.

“Oh my god, some of them have stopped moving. They’re definitely dead.”

“Have you fed them?”

“Yes, I fed 1,500 ladybugs,” Jillian said sarcastically. “No, I haven’t fed them. All I have are Chinese left-overs and Cheez-Its.”

“Well then throw them a Cheez-It.”

I do not know if the ladybugs ever received their Cheez-It snack, but they did sleep that night in my sister’s mini-fridge, alongside take-out containers of Chinese food. According to the instructions that came with the ladybugs, they are supposed to be kept in a cool environment, so Jillian was not being cruel by refrigerating them. Although sleeping the whole night next to Chinese food and being unable to eat it does sound a little like torture.

Jillian and her friends released the 1,500 ladybugs into the great outdoors the next morning. She was supposed to send me at least two in the mail (so that the other would not get lonely), but I have yet to receive them. Jillian said that maybe a few would fly to Shippensburg, so if anyone sees a ladybug within the next week, it might be a part of the 1,500.

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