I did my Reiki shift at the hospital, and then met up with a friend and ran some errands with her. Giving her a ride home apparently entitled me to plunder and pillage in her strawberry patch, for gas money. Or at least I tried to plunder and pillage. She yelled at me and made me be more methodical in my strawberry picking, even going so far as to have me pick the gross, mildewed berries for her chickens. The nerve.
I didn’t have my camera with me at the time, so this is an after-the-fact snapshot of part of my haul. Tomorrow: I’m pretty sure strawberry rhubarb pie will happen, assuming I still have some chopped up rhubarb lurking somewhere in the freezer.
No flower pictures! Instead, scary beetle pictures!
I think this might be Prionus laticollis and…yes! according to the same guru who helped me out with my previous requests on bugguide.net, it is! What mad skills I have! I am able to look at one picture…and say that it looks similar to another picture!
OK, so Prionus laticollis is the broad-necked root borer. The larvae eat rotting wood.
I wonder if all that business in the beetle’s back end is egg-laying equipment. Meaning what, she thinks our front steps are rotting? Hey, wait just one minute there, little lady!
Her face looks like it’s covered in spider web.
It also looks like it’s been bashed in.
OK, so not only do we have a beetle that is attempting to destroy our front steps, we have a ginormous spider capable of beating the hell out of a two-inch long beetle.
I’m not sure I’m going to sleep tonight.
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