NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Imagine this spectacle in the middle of Manhattan: 720,000 ladybugs from Montana, on the attack.
The flying creatures have purposely been released into the greenery of one of New York's biggest apartment complexes _ 80 acres of high rises on the East Side. These normally gentle ladybugs have a mission: to eat pests infesting the neatly landscaped property.
The bugs from Bozeman arrived at the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex on Thursday, packed in boxes shipped by a natural gardening company.
They quickly spread their wings over the rental complex near First Avenue and East 14th Street, crawling into plants, flowers and shrubs in search of leaf-sucking aphids and mites.
The complex owner, Tishman Speyer, purchased the ladybugs from Planet Natural in Bozeman, which got them from collectors gathering them in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Planet Natural owner Eric Vinje kept them in refrigerators with the temperature kept to about 35 degrees. They go ``dormant'' at that temperature, using up their fat stores without eating and staying alive for about five months.
By the time they reached Manhattan, they were lively and read to work.
Residents needn't worry about swarms of ladybugs in their apartments, since this is not the Asian ladybug typical of urban areas and they're not prone to entering homes.
1010 WINS Boroughs & 'Burbs: Manhattan
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