Where I am mocked by, of all things, a Carrion Beetle. This carrion
beetle, to be exact:
So this unknown buggish, beetlish thing landed on my deck soon after
I had taken the photos of the Two-spotted Stink Bug of the previous post—and after I had
(stupidly) put away the camera. Of course it was gone by the time I got back
with said camera.
Fast forward to the next afternoon. *fwup* A flying thing bounced
off the house wall. It was back! And when I went to get it off the deck railing,
it fell to the ground and disappeared. Strike Two. I finally decided to creep
through the ever-more-tick-infested yard and crouch down (making it easier for the ticks to get me) to look around for it under the deck.
There it was! Of course, I now had a container in hand but no camera. And while
going for the camera, the insect crawled out of the crack in the container…
Strike Three.
But that wasn’t the end of it. *fwip* It landed on the house wall.
And promptly ducked behind the siding. Argh!
It finally showed up again, and this time I had a new holding
container. No cracks and with a lid. I had even had time to punch in air holes. And I had the camera. Success! See above photo.
And because I now had an okay shot, the damn bug taunted me the rest
of the afternoon. It landed on the umbrella… “Nope, sorry, don’t need you anymore.” I
went inside to fix supper—and it followed me into the house by coming in under the screen door! [All
sorts of things have come in under that badly-fitting storm door, most notably
skinks and a baby black rat snake that somehow made it half way up the door to wrap itself around
the door handle.] I rescued the beetle before Sephy-cat could grab it and chased it back
to the other side of the door. I took my soup out to the deck and what do you know? The blasted
bug was on my hat that I had left outside!
It finally fell off the hat and disappeared down the crack between deck
boards. Hah! I thought; let's see you get out of that.
Yes, you know what happened next. It did come back...
Yes, that’s it. Sitting. On. The. Camera.
My life in a nutshell: mercilessly teased and taunted by a Carrion Beetle. (Possibly even two, because that first one doesn't quite look like the one in the next two shots.)
