They are taking over the world......

Argghhh. We've been invaded by ladybirds! Hundreds of 'em, all hibernating inside the workings of a venetian blind. We have had to take down all the curtains and blinds as the double glazing people are coming to fit new windows all over the house. When Himself removed the blind he 'spotted' (ha ha) this lot:It was a sunny day, so loads of them started waking up, and crawled away from their nest. They can really get a shift on when they want! We figured that a small artists paint brush and a little cup were the safest things to catch them with. Trouble is they were getting quiet lively and what with us disturbing their sleeping spots and it being warm, more and more were waking up, as fast as we collected them, they crawled out of the cup! Now we had both remarked in the summer about the number of ladybirds we seemed to get in this room, but put it down to the fact that we have the windows open a lot and it is a very sunny room. How naive! Little did we know they were nesting and planning on taking over. The thing is, are they British ladybirds or are they the 'dreaded' Harlequin ones, that like the grey squirrels are busy wiping out our native breed? Neither of us could tell and after much trawling the web, we were still unsure, so we took photos and filled in a form here , we await their verdict. In the meanwhile, Himself valiantly struggled to get them all unharmed into a large jar, it's a bit like herding cats (cats that can fly) and it took him over three hours to get well over two hundred ladybirds into that big jar and not leave any on the loose: we covered the top of the jar with a sheet of kitchen roll and waited until they all settled back down to sleep. The jar is now inside a cool, dark wardrobe until we hear more from the ladybird research group. What fun eh?

EDIT: 11.45pm - Himself has just spotted two wandering across the ceiling,. They can stay there.