It’s really bugging me, but does anyone know what this beetle is called?
Is it maybe Buprestis aurulenta? Or?
It was lying dead on my deck. I’m on Vancouver Island, so if you want to check it out the I.D. of the beetle, you’ll have an idea of the area where this bug was found.
The greenish-blue colours of the wings are gorgeous, as is the coppery underbelly. What an amazing outfit it’s wearing.
I welcome any suggestions if anyone knows what it is.
It’s about a little over an inch long.
What do you think it might be?
The ten-lined June beetle lives underground for two or three years as a larva that looks like a hungry white prawn. It eats the roots of plants, and loves to destroy my potato crop.
When it is about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long, it hatches as a beetle, in those hot days of summer. It likes to fly around and land on an unsuspecting person’s back, where that victim can’t reach it.
These bugs freak me out. I always turn up my collar and stay close to the house when I take our dog out for last call.
Our English springer spaniel puppy, Ruby, had a different view of these beetles. She thought God had put them on this earth for her to chase and, perhaps to bring them into the house to play with.
At this point I would like to share an entry I made in one of my journals where I wrote things of note that happened on any particular day. (The Captain was away commercial fishing and might later be interested in reading how I spent my summer.) Our puppy, Ruby, was a little bit wild and crazy those first months of her life.
August 22, 2007
Ruby brought in a beetle again, after her last pee of the evening. She’s getting very surreptitious about it. She went straight to her doggie bed and put her chin on the bed, trying to look innocent. But I’m onto that fake innocence and sure enough, I heard bug screams coming from inside her mouth. “M-m-m-r-r-z-z-z! M-m-m-r-r-z-z-z!”
It was hard to make her give it up, but finally she spat it out, and batted at it meaning to play with it. I couldn’t just pick it up with my bare hands, but a little dog bowl was nearby, so I used it to try to scoop up the bug. I say “try” because it didn’t work out so well. The beetle has tiny hooks on its legs and they stuck to the fuzzy material of the dog bed. I tried scooping again and as it let go it brushed against my hand and I shrieked. The bug was flung into the corner under a chest of drawers, and Ruby, freaked out by my shriek, leapt up off the bed and backed off a few feet.
I laughed until I cried. Again. She has me laughing so often with her antics out in the yard. I’m sure the neighbours wonder about the old woman who lives alone and goes out into her backyard laughing out loud all by herself.
This horrible creature – ten-lined June beetle (Polyphylla decemlineata) – loves my yard, especially the potato patch. A few years ago we had some of these (1.5″ to 2″) beetles hanging around the place, but things must have been going very well for them since then, as they are now extremely prolific. Not only do they fly around the yard at night like little helicopters and try to land on my back when I have the dog out for her last pee, but they get into my garden, lay their eggs, and when the grubs hatch out, they eat the potatoes.
Here is a pathetic little potato, mostly eaten by one of these ten-lined beetle larvae. I was discouraged by my struggling potato crop, since not much was growing in the very dry soil. Even after watering it every day, the soil was dry except for the first half inch. So I decided to pull up the potatoes and cut my losses. Why water these potatoes just to feed the bugs?
A few days ago, I pulled up half my potato crop and found about thirty of the grubs. I put them on an upside down garbage can lid and placed the lid at the base of a tree I had seen raccoons climb up a day or so before. The next day the grubs were gone.
Two days later, I dug up the rest of the potatoes, and again, found all these grubs that you see on the garbage can lid. I left them there, on offer to any raccoons that might be passing through the yard at night. I know the raccoons are here every night because I hear them, I see them, and I see the holes in the grass where they have been digging to try finding these grubs without my help.
With any luck, these grubs would become racoon food and save me the trouble of stepping on them to squish them. I don’t want them to suffer, but they are destroying my garden, and it already needs all the help it can get.
Do you have these terrifying insects in your yard? I hope not.
*****
Update: A few hours later I looked at these grubs and saw that a bunch of yellow jackets had found them and were eating them alive. It seemed cruel to me, but I didn’t feel sorry enough for them to try to save them.
Early in the morning, all traces of the grubs were gone, so I am assuming that the raccoons ate them.
wordsfromanneli 