My recent discussion of cicadas reminded me that I neglected to post the photo I took last month of the biggest bug I've ever seen in the wild.
And by "wild" I mean my own back yard.
The thing was rather confusedly banging itself against my patio screen door. Unless he wasn't really confused at all and that's just how big bugs enjoy themselves. (I imagine the experience is a bit like having CNN playing loudly on the TV all day - which some people do. To each his own.)
Anyway, I carefully captured him in a plastic container back on June 22 and took this photo before gently releasing back into the wild so he might know the pleasure of banging himself against other screen doors:
Do you recognize this beast?
I think he's a stag beetle - something I've only seen before on TV nature shows, at the Toledo Zoo's old natural history museum, and in certain high school cafeterias.
Cute, isn't he?
I suppose I should mention that I Photoshopped the quarter in. He really wasn't *quite* that much bigger than George Washington - but he seemed to be about the size of a Volkswagen at the time.
And as we all know, the way things seem is more important than the way they really are - right?
Postscript: He hasn't returned since I released him. But it makes me smile to think of him out there now still regaling all his friends with his story about the night he was abducted by a hideous alien creature that exposed him to hi-tech electronic gear before he managed to escape.
If he ever ends up banging himself against YOUR screen door, be sure to tell him I said hi.
Carumba!
ReplyDeleteThe biggest beetle I ever saw, (apart from Volkswagens) was on a river bank in Kentucky or maybe Tennessee at the Land Between the Lakes.
It was metalic bluish-green or greenish-blue. And about the size of my foot.
Or that's how I remember it, anwyay.
The captcha is arumalke. Now THAT's a good one.
OH! You photoshopping rapscallion! I thought that your stag bug had the edge over the tarantula intruder into our Texas living room, but apparently not.
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