This stag-beetle (about two and a half inches long, we reckon) gave my son a bit of a turn when he saw it bumbling against his bedroom window yesterday. Today my wife and I caught sight of it crawling – very slowly – up our garden fence. I managed not to let out a girlie scream, and my wife’s generally relaxed about insects. Later on, I’m told, it wandered in through our open garden doors and ambled in a leisurely fashion around our dining table before taking its leave.
Look, I know quite a few of you live in countries stuffed with insects three times the size of this chap, which'll wrestle you to the ground, pump you full of venom, wrap you in a cocoon, and whisper "She's my wife now!" in your ear just before they start to eat you alive. But this is Britain and one of the reasons I live here is that the only life-threatening creatures tend to be young men who live on council estates.
When I was about nine or ten, I often used to encounter stag-beetles buzzing
down our road in Wimbledon during summer term. A sporting friend of mine used to chase
them with a cricket bat and give them what for: I feel guilty I didn’t try to stop him, because these magnificent-looking brutes – the largest insects in
Britain – are an endangered species. Which is probably why I haven't seen one for so long (I’d remember – they’re quite scary, especially if, like
me, you can’t stand insects: hell, I freak out if I find myself in a room with a daddy long-legs).
They spend five years as a larva, underground (eating rotten wood,
which they convert into fat), six weeks as a pupa, which then, amazingly
creepily, turns from an albino science-fiction monster into a full-grown black beetle, which in turn spends a year underground.
After they emerge, they only live for about 40 days, don’t eat anything during
that period, fight other stag-beetles for possession of rotting logs, find a
mate, indulge in some how’s-your-father – and die.
An odd life, let’s face it. Despite their fearsome
looks, they’re harmless to humans. But that won’t stop me having a massive
heart attack if I find our new friend in our bed tonight.
I have a little room off our carport. I sit out there at night listening to the radio... Smokin cigarettes. There's a light and beetles swarm that room like kudzu. It's not uncommon for one to hit my chest and fall into my shirt pocket. I saw one the other night drop dead mid flight...hit the desk like a hammer.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen any with choppers like that though.
No, I wouldn't last ten seconds in a room swarming with beetles (or moths) - and if one dropped in my pocket, I would need sedation and a new shirt (and probably new underpants). Happy with ladybirds and shield beetles - you know, the pretty little green ones. I don't mind snakes, but, then, we don't have any genuinely poisonous ones (the adder is over-rated, I'm told). I despise cockroaches - I've never seen one in the UK, but remember being beseiged by an army of them in a sleazy hotel room in Miami one night.
ReplyDeleteEnglish travel-writer Jonathan Raban (he lives in Seattle now) once wote a book about spending a year in Tennessee. He described visiting local schools as a guest and hearing the children recite nature poetry - only it was mainly British poetry (you know, daffodils and sylvan glades and gentle streams and cuckoos etc.) , which made no reference to all the dangerous, poisonous, biting, stinging, kill you and eat you stuff to be found in the USA. (On every visit - on every visit to the US - I check under the toilet lid for spiders - we've got spiders, but they don't tend to kill you.)
The stag-beetle's horns are only ever used to battle other male stag-beetles - but there's still something unnerving about them when they're headed your way.
That's funny about Raban...our friends up north don't have to deal with these vicious creatures. Donald Davidson, writing in the 40's, talked about how this shaped the difference in how each region viewed nature. It was easy for the new englander to rhapsodize nature when it was easily bent to his will...a trait the new englander never tiers of by the way.
DeleteWhere as, in The South you can't turn back on the bushes for an instant...they'll overrun your yard for one. They hide vicious creatures for the other.
I have a recurring problem with my father-in-law up north by the way. He thinks it would just be the coolest to get my son to make friends with the harmless snakes on his property. He just can't seem to grasp that in this instance his experiences are not normative...that it might not be a good idea for a 3 year old living in Mississippi to view snakes as chummy. He's never seen what a rattle snake can do to a grown mans leg.
Anyway...this is one of the reasons why, while there are many conservationists in The South, you don't find a lot of support for misty eyed environmentalism down here. If we aren't trying to keep the dog from being eaten by an alligator or dodging cottonmouths...all while suffering from lethargy brought on by another bought of West Nile...we're dodging tornadoes or boarding our windows from hurricanes.
Mr. Graham...I am in Mississippi now where I intend to die...but, my people have been in Georgia since dirt.
For your readers who suffer from "delirium tremens" or an addiction to Librium it is probably not a good idea to feature a large picture of a stag beetle [without warning]. These large mandibles are not there for nothing.
ReplyDeleteLike E.F, I like to spend summer evenin time in my rockin chair out on the porch in the sweet Georgia breeze, maybe sippin a glass of my favourite Jeff Daniels Old Poughkeepsie Sour Mash, singin rebel songs with my kin. Often times, I say to Raylene ' Don go openin yo mouth too wide, hun, lest one of them stag-beetles fly in while you a' croonin like Patsy Kline an nip off your tonsils with his sharp ol pincers'.
ReplyDeleteAnd she say' Jes you make sure he don't get lost an breed with all them other critters stuck in yo beard, Cecil Ingram.' And then we laugh and praise the Lord.