Harlequin bugs

Some very interesting bugs entered by garden. They looked kind of pretty, and more like large lady bugs, so I figured they must be good. Assume the best in everyone! They seemed to breed quickly....

Around the same time, I noticed my passionfruit plant was looking sick along with a few other plants. I thought it was the humid spring and mildew so thought I couldn't do much about it.

Then, I discovered that these cute little bugs that I had been intrigued by were harlequin bugs and that they were culprits. Looking for a way to get rid of them I stumbled across people who called them the evil harlequin bugs from hell. It seems that they are rapid, rabid destroyers. Shame they look so pretty.

Fortunately, it says that soapy water may deal with them. I will have to give it a try.

Sometimes, we don't notice little things, like the Bible talks about, 'the little foxes', little evil harlequin foxes, that look cute. We just kind of turn a blind eye since they don't look very destructive. I sometimes think that the little sentences that are introduced into what should be sound doctrine, can seem like attractive ideas, yet later they have infested our thoughts and minds.

I guess a lot of things would come into that category. Little entertaining pictures or borderline pornography, or little snippets of gossip or ideas that just settle and seem ok. It is not as if we are feeding them. They just don't look like harmful things to start with.

Not all that is pretty is innocent and harmless. Beware the harlequin bug!

I should have looked up what a harlequin was and in Wikipedia, I found:

"The notion that the Harlequin motif grew out of France is evidenced by Hellequin, a stock character in French passion plays. Hellequin, a black-faced emissary of the devil, is said to have roamed the countryside with a group of demons chasing the damned souls of evil people to Hell. The physical appearance of Hellequin offers an explanation for the traditional colours of Harlequin's mask (red and black)."

Lucky these sinful little demons may be able to be washed away.

A good reminder to check our thinking. Anything that is a bit suss should be washed away. The hard part is eliminating all the ones hiding under every leaf or sitting too high on a tree, I guess we have to keep at it with our minds and just keep working on winning that battle.