While ducking out the front door to check on some feral cats we feed there I spotted a shadow on the security door - a big freakin' bug! It was tough to guess what it was through the screen from it's shadow, but being brave, I went out and identified a good-sized Palo Verde Boring Beetle, about 8cm (over 3") long. Melinda might have well run for the Raid (she has a thing for bugs), I ran for the camera! I've seen these before - they burrow under shade trees and the larvae feed on the roots of trees. They come out this time of year as adults (not unlike the cicadas in other areas of the states) to mate and lay eggs to repeat the cycle. Sometimes about all you see of them are the centimeter or so holes in the ground that they emerge through, or sometimes you see what looks like a small bird flying through the yard - they are that large!
Of course, give a guy a macro lens and I'm not content to get the entire creature in a single shot - lets look at the juicy details! Getting about as close as I could focus, I checked out its surprisingly hairy rear leg, the way-cool spiked collar that it wears, as well as a close-up of its compound eye. For scale, the holes in the screen are a little over 1mm diameter, and they are about 3mm center-to-center...
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1 comment:
um yeah, totally gross and disgusting. I killed one of those palo verde creeepy buggers last night with one spray from "bugs r done" a really effective bug killer, d-limonene mostly, get it at sprouts. tell melinda it works better than raid seriously! good for ants, beetles, roaches, and yeah ugly creepy huge wolf spiders, whip scorpions and the like.
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