Irony Defined?

This story is a few months old but I’m just getting around to writing it.

Back in October, our household experienced a ladybug hatch.
From research, a female ladybug will lay about 10-15 eggs and apparently an insect orgy was going on in the house because there was easily 100 plus of these creatures all congregating in our foyer.
Although they weren’t really bothering us (apart from devouring the pet parakeet, Google it, parakeets are their primary prey, horrible sound hearing a parakeet screech “Help Me!” and knowing you’re too late to save it), we still wanted them out of the house so Ellen gave me the task of getting rid of them.
The first problem was that, as previously mentioned, they were in the foyer which is one of the high entrance types with a window about 14 feet off the ground. The ladybugs were moving back and forth between the window and the ceiling (about 20 feet up).
After seeing the height problem, it occurred to me that I have an extendable wand (calm down, ladies) that can be attached with a duster (now really calm down ladies, I’m not dusting for you!). By using the duster, I was able to trap the ladybugs in the hairs and then throw them outside. After capturing and releasing about twenty of the bugs, it occurred to me, “What the hell am I doing?!” In my past military life, I used to help train F-15E Strike Eagle aircrews whose job was to drop enormous bombs on the enemy eliminating all trace of their existence from the Earth and I never had a pang of guilt yet here I was delicately removing ladybugs one by one.
To say I’ve gone soft would be an understatement.
I had to excuse myself to the bathroom, drop trou and make sure I still had a pair.
After returning to the foyer with a new found determination, I was intercepted by my 13-year old vegetarian daughter who probably saw a different look in my eye and asked me, “You’re not going to kill any of them are you?”
How do you respond?
It took me several hours over three days to finally clear out the house and not kill any of the stupid SOBs.
Now the kicker, after clearing out the house, I happened to be at work and one of my co-workers stopped by my office. He looks at my desk and says, “Oh, look, a ladybug”. He delicately picks it up and says “Fly, be free” and throws it into the air. Except this one never took flight for some reason and his throw made a perfect arc from across the office directly into a hot cup of green tea that I just poured. The bug was floating upside down just like a dead goldfish. I pulled him out but it was too late for this one. Now that’s irony.