The July 2001 issue of Vanity Fair features an interview with author J. T. LeRoy in which he hazily recalls some sort of a beetle that creates jewelry:
“There’s this beetle they use to make jewelry, and they supply it with material and thread and it just weaves it into this beautiful piece. Well, I think it actually consumes it and shits it out or something. And it becomes a really hip kind of jewelry.”
So what is this beetle called? Or is LeRoy just mis-remembering something?
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TH
Unless you’re talking about a scarab I don’t have a clue.
Actually, plenty of folks would say that I don’t have a clue either way, so let me beat them to it. 
To answer the OP: LeRoy’s a pretentious idiot? Who’s currently “Flavor of the Month”? Who’s misremembering what a “scarab” beetle is? And because he’s a “genius” the Vanity Fair editor isn’t going to edit out the obvious idiocies? Or maybe the editor’s just quietly laughing up his sleeve–I know I would.
Fortunately his 15 minutes will be up soon, and he will mercifully depart.