Of all the creepy crawlers, ladybugs might be one of the most benign specimens: they don't send us shrieking like a little girl, when they use our arm as an airplane runway of sorts. In fact, some cultures even consider the latter good luck. Indeed, the etymology of its common name reflects this reverent attitude: a dainty ladybug in English is known as god's little cow in Russian and other Slavic languages. All in the diminutive, of course!

So, when one of these chosen insects landed on my arm, I took it as a sign from above that I must macro-photograph immediately and carefully transferred it to my balcony (temporarily!).

Yet when I zoomed in on this embodiment of kawaii of the insect world, I realized that my little cow had a GHASTLY SKULL PATTERN on its head. Then I recalled that gardeners loved them because they dismember and annihilate (chomp-chomp!) pests like aphids.

It was at that moment that I realized that the ladybug I caught (I said, temporarily!), might, in fact, be a member of a secret cult! The kind that appears in Ben Wheatley films. So the photoshoot was cut short (the official story is that it got too windy). Just in case.