We had quite an adventure this evening soon after noticing two snake-sized holes a few feet apart in our backyard. We had no clue what type of living thing was under there, so as true idiots, we flooded the holes and poked around at them a bit. Sure enough, in a few seconds, this guy emerged. As near as I can tell after a little research, he is a member of the rhinoceros beetle family; more specifically, strategus antaeus. Scary-looking, but gentle, unless you are a plant. You can see the scale next to Andrew's foot - he was about 3 inches long! We hung out with him for a few minutes and then evicted him to the neighbors' yard (shhhh!).
And as long as we are talking about backyard critters, here's a St. Andrew's Cross spider Jon unwittingly came eye-to-eye with while weed eating back in November. Again, a fierce-looking guy but totally harmless to humans and beneficial because of the bad bugs he ate.
6 comments:
OK...GROSS!!! Pregnant lady here! Does anyone remember my feeling about bugs that can go crunch??? ie. I have "beetlephobia". I want to also let you know that my new recent baby hormone fear is spiders. All kinds....HATE em!!!
Now I shall go and not sleep all night with nightmares of killer attacking creepy things.
Just kiddin' Love ya!!! : )
If it makes you feel any better, we first thought it was a snake coming out of the hole, then saw his horns and were sure it was a scorpion. We were both jumping around like sissy girls. SO, a cute little (well, large) beetle isn't so bad, right? :O) Hope you get some sleep.
Ok, maybe I'm thankful that we live in a "boring" state where our bugs are small like our sunshine quantity. Ewww! I would have f-r-e-a-k-e-d!!!
the verdict's still out on my feelings about the beetle, but I guess it's relatively ok compared to what could have emerged from that hole!
I would have peed my pants, screamed my ass off and fainted. I HATE beetles. That's one scary bug!
This makes me laugh, I just posted something about bunnies in our backyard on my blog! I sure don't miss the bird-size cockroaches and mile-long centipedes that we left behind in Hawaii.
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