Ugly comes knocking
July 12th, 2009
Lee said he heard something thumping on the window that sounded like a small bird. When he checked outside with a flashlight there was this enormous bug on the window sill trying to get in. It had wings also, but they are closed up in this picture. I wonder what it was.
July 12th, 2009 at 4:22 am
That’s an adult ten-lined june beetle (Polyphylla decemlineata) ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-lined_June_beetle. Pretty gross, if you ask me!
July 12th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Wow! Thanks, I would have never known! I don’t know bugs very well. Last year we had our barn covered in a bug we didn’t know. Our neighbor knew what they were (Boxelder bugs) so I learned a new bug that way.
July 12th, 2009 at 11:48 am
Yeah, I hate bugs! We always have some sort of them around the house or in the house. When we moved here we learned about camel crickets – they are these jumping half spider, half cricket-looking thing. When I saw the first one in our house I named him “George”, and Randy killed George for me. Then a day later there was another George, and another. Soon there were Georges everywhere in the house. The cat, Jack, loves to eat Georges, but he always pulls the long legs off & leaves them behind on the floor. Since then we got the place exterminated, but still every now & then we see George legs left behind on the floor.
July 12th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Oh man, that’s so scary! Eek! What if it touched you- or worse, what if it landed on you insead of the window?? That thing is huge! I mean, I know all insects are different and they have a role in our ecosystem, but still…
July 13th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Lynn- What a funny story.
Rachael- Thankfully it was outside. It was the most amazingly big beetle I have ever seen.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Lynn – How do you identify these things so quickly, especially since they don’t live in your area? I’m amazed!
Also, very funny story about the Georges. I’ve never heard of someone naming their insect pests before.
I looked up your camel crickets. We used to spray to kill bugs indoors in Phoenix, but we don’t plan to do that here. Not sure what I would do if we were overrun with camel crickets. Wikipedia suggests that you can release house centipedes to kill them (and pretty much everything else too it seems), but that would be trading one bug for an even scarier looking one! Much better to have a Jack, even if you do end up with George legs laying about.
Rachael – The information on the Ten-Lined June Beetle (they eat pin needles, not mice by the way) says they squeak or hiss if you touch them. I’m glad I didn’t know this when I took the photo. I would have felt obligated to pick it up for the sake of scientific curiosity.
July 14th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Lol – my husband would have picked it up, too, to hear the hiss. But not me!
I name alot of things~ it keeps it interesting. …Bugs, mice, deer, woodchucks, rabbits, stray cats… In my defense, I didn’t know what the camel crickets were called at the time, so I chose a name to call them (George). Randy always tells me I’m going to run out of names one day…
We’ve had so many more bugs inside than just Georges… Let’s see – last autumn there were thousands of ladybugs all over the walls of one side of the house. I wouldn’t let Randy kill them, so we captured them in jars & took them way down the street & let them go… There’s always some kind of bug or critter (squirrels, mice, lizards, etc.) that gets inside & risks attack by Jack. And no, I do not want any house centipedes, thank you!
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Disturbing beetle update — Tonight another giant Ten-Lined June Beetle was knocking on the kitchen window. (Always that window too!) I kept my promise and went outside with a light. Poking it produced no effects, but picking it up by the back produced a series of short puffs of air. I tried it several times and it could reproduce the puffing sound quickly. Very weird.
In other news, how did this species survive this long? In the 2 minutes I was out there it spent the entire time in a 1 sq ft area, first stuck on a brier plant, then in spider webs, and finally on a cleaver plant. If it ever managed to free itself, the goal was obviously to fly headlong into my flashlight. Perhaps they have lots of offspring to make up for their lack of acumen.
August 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 pm
That sucker could grab you by the collar and carry you across the street