Beetles, Bugs & Butterflies - Oh My!

Okay so strictly speaking there were no bugs and no butterflies but there was a beetle and one hell of a beetle it was!

One of the *cough* joys of living in the countryside is the multitude of strange looking bugs and insects that festoon themselves around my house. We have no shortage of spiders and gnats out number humans by about 1,000,000,000,000,000 : 1 but occasionally we'll get a real humdinger like a rather hairy spider that I found in the bath one night. I'm not kidding, I almost thought it was a tarantunla it was that big. It had hairy elbows for heavens sake. I had to wait until Mr M was home from the pub to rescue me and it even have him a slight shudder.

But Saturday night brought us one of the creepiest bugs of all. Thankfully it was dead.

We had no idea what it was. I did recall seeing something wandering aimlessly around the garage last week but at the time thought it was a large moth (we have some freaky looking flying things around here...) but on closer examination it appeared to be something else. Second thought was cockroach having not come very close to one of those before but on close examination of my mother-in-laws insect book it turns out it is a Cockchafer Beetle. My inlaws have lived in the countryside all their lives and they've never seen one before.

The Cockchafer is also known as the "May Bug" because, erm, they appear in May and belongs to the Scarab family. They were almost completely eradicated in this country in the middle of the last century but started to make a comeback due to changes in pest control - the larvae lives underground for 4-5 years and can cause a lot of damage to roots. They are completely harmless to humans as they don't sting or bite but man, they are ugly.

There is now one less Cockchafer Beetle stalking the countryside of the West Midlands (Note; it died of natural causes, nowt to do with us) and hopefully I won't be stumbling across many more of these.

love & kisses

Mrs M x

PS For some reason my father-in-law has kept this little specimen on the shelf in his kitchen. I still have no idea why.