Cheerios

It is a well-known fact within the arthropod community that ladybugs love cereal. So when we heard about the recent outbreak of Cheerios-related ladybug infestations, quite frankly, we weren't surprised.

But the children were.

Since the 1980s, around the time you or your au pair were born, parents have been giving their little ones Cheerios as a crunchy, caloric plaything. And, surely, Cheerios do make a great chompy pacifier/gum soother/pocket filler/object to throw around the house. However, this shift in positioning from adult breakfast cereal to portable toddler treat was poorly planned, and if I had been hired by General Mills to be a consultant, with my knowledge of breakfast foods and coccinellids, I would have advised them otherwise. Alas, it was the 80s, and I was too interested in Duran Duran and coordinated Benetton ensembles for that role. Also, nobody asked me.

In any case, toddlers love Cheerios, and so do ladybugs.

At first, there was enough lightly sweetened oat cereal for everyone. The ladybugs would crawl into your cupboard, lay some eggs, and take your Cheerios outside to eat them peacefully in the garden or wherever they hang out, and the toddlers would eat their Cheerios loudly and sloppily in their high chairs or strollers or cages Pack 'n Plays.

However, when the great oat famine of late '09 hit, these interspecies boundaries blurred, and ladybugs, being the destructive agricultural pests that they are (plus lacking the ability to go grocery shopping), had to find a new source of cholesterol-reducing whole-grain oats, modified corn starch, sugar, oat bran, salt, calcium carbonate, oat fiber, tripotassium phosphate, corn starch, wheat starch, and vitamin E (mixed tocopherols) added to preserve freshness.

Here is the (expected) result:

As we have mentioned before, we don't actually have any practical solutions to these real-world problems here at they want to kill us. We just shine a light on the issues. However, we have heard that ladybugs don't like Oatios. Good luck!