LINCOLN, Mass. -- One ladybug may bring luck, but hundreds have left some residents in Lincoln feeling anything but.

Like many people in the area, Margit Griffith returned home Tuesday afternoon to find it swarming with ladybugs.

"All of a sudden, I looked out the window and there were about a 100 ladybugs, or what I am assuming were ladybugs, on my son's window. So, I ran to my daughter's room and there were about a 100 ladybugs there," Griffith said.

In the windows, on the clapboard, under the eaves, the outside of house was crawling with ladybugs.

"(There was) not a sign of a ladybug yesterday," Griffith said.

"What happened is it's getting cold, the ladybugs are moving in from the field and are looking for a place to spend the winter," said Elissa Landre, director of Mass Audubon’s Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary.

Sunday's unseasonable snow served as the ladybugs' alarm bell. Still, it's one thing if they find shelter in the nooks and crannies outside the house, but it's another to have them crawling around inside.

"You probably don't (want them inside your house), but if you give them a couple of days in your house, they are going to find some cracks up in the attic or places that they can spend the winter quietly," Landre said.

The ladybugs will not nest, make a pest of themselves or reproduce. Instead, the ladybugs just want to sleep.

To get rid of them, experts suggest brushing them up or using the vacuum, but don't use pesticides and don't squash them.

"If you try to squash one, they squash a yellow obnoxious-smelling fluid. So, don't squash them," Landre said.

Come spring, Margit said she'll open the windows and let them fly away.

"Our home is their home if it's just a few," Margit said.

The ladybugs are considered good luck for a good reason. Locally, they are very beneficial because they eat aphids, which harm fruit trees as well as maple and pines.

The ladybug is the official state insect of Massachusetts.