Earlier this week, I went to Franklin County to speak with Mary Watts. Her 80-year-old husband is a Korean War veteran. Johnnie Watts was a machine gunner. He is currently in a nursing home. Previously, he had been at the Missouri Veterans Home in Warrensburg. A doctor at the home wrote in a report that he was treating Watts for bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder with frequent flashbacks.

About the time the doctor was treating Watts for these things, the VA denied a claim for disability benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder. Mary was confused. If her husband didn't have post-traumatic stress disorder, why was the government treating him for it?

I was confused, too. I took a few documents and left. I walked out of the house, took about two steps toward my car and was suddenly engulfed in a swarm of bees. "Killer bees! I'm done for!" Those were the first thoughts that came to my mind. I made a few panicky swats at the killer bees swarming around my face before I realized they weren't killer bees. They were ladybugs.

That realization calmed me. I continued to swat at the ladybugs, but no longer in panic. If you can swat gratefully at bugs — thanks for not being killer bees — that's what I was doing.

My swatting was not very effective. The bugs were all over my clothes. I drove slowly down Highway N with my windows open, but a good number of the ladybugs stayed with me all the way to St. Louis. There were a few still on my clothes when I arrived at the newspaper. I told a couple of colleagues what happened, and somebody said that ladybugs were swarming all over the country, apparently looking for warm places to spend the winter.

I hope that means we're going to have a severe winter. I don't say that because I enjoy frigid weather. It's just that I like to believe there is order in nature. Things happen for a reason.

For instance, I subscribe to the theory that the coloration of the bands on wooly worms are reliable indicators of weather. I am not sure if that's true, but it should be. I do not want to believe that one year their bands are light and another year they're dark, and there is no meaning to it. It can't be random. It must mean something.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is random. You can be treated for something they say you don't have. In fact, several people read the story about Watts and said, "That's why we don't want the government involved in health care."

But the truth is, insurance companies are random, too. Not long ago, I wrote about a case in which an insurance company authorized a feeding tube but wouldn't pay for the equipment necessary to maintain the tube. Or for the foodstuff to go into the tube. At least, it would not authorize payment while the patient was at home, where his family was caring for him at no cost to the insurance company. If he were to go into a nursing home, which the insurance company would have to pay for, then everything would be covered. It made no sense.

Surely, there is an order in nature, a sense of harmony, that is lacking in human endeavor.

When the West Nile virus decimated the crow population, the area around my backyard bird-feeder was soon overrun with mourning doves. It turns out that crows eat the eggs of mourning doves. Fewer crows, more mourning doves.

There is some of that in the human world, of course. When politicians decimated the regulators, the bankers gorged themselves at the bird-feeder, so to speak.

For the most part, though, cause and effect seem unrelated in our world. Executives of a bankrupt company get retention bonuses? It happens all the time. "We can't afford to lose their leadership now," say the directors. Huh?

Nature is different. There are reasons for things. A snowshoe hare changes from brown in the summer to white in the winter. An elephant doesn't bother to change color. Why should it?

Admittedly, much of what goes on in nature is beyond our comprehension. Monarch butterflies fly to the mountains of Michoacan for the winter. They hang like living ornaments from the oyamel fir trees. As spring approaches, they mate in the groves. Then the males die and the females leave the mountains to begin the journey north. I am not sure I want to understand the significance of that, but I do want to believe there is meaning to it. I don't want it to be as meaningless as executive compensation.

So it is with the swarming of the ladybugs. I have never seen them swarm before. I have never even heard of them swarming.

I hope it means we're in for a severe winter.