Oooh, spiders are cool. In the same way that horror movies are: terrifying but fascinating.
Also, Gregor has been caught and released into my backyard. He did not, happily, take flight and scare the ever-loving bejeezus out of me, nor anything else. He waddled into a glass which I covered with a peice of cardboard, then cheerily plopped into the yard, where I released him. He seemed generally indifferent to the entire process, in fact.
I found one of those in my kitchen once, when I was living a temporary batchelorette life. I did the old water glass and index card trick and tossed it out into the garden.
Thump
Insects and their relations should not ‘thump’ when they hit the ground.
I can’t imagine how it got there. It was much too big to get in around a window or anything like that. I think it must have conned the landlady into letting it in through the door. Told her it was my cousin from out of town or something.
Be careful when you go out in your backyard, lest little Gregor grow up to be one of THESE!!!
(the bug in back, not the guy in front) 
I was sure Bosda was gonna post this one
Aw, crap, I didn’t think of that!
See, I live next door to a factory. It’s a little bit newer than our house (which was built in 1910 or thereabouts). They’re grandfathered out of the zoning regulations, unfortunately. What they produce is heavy machinery, lots and lots of noise, and a fair amount of pollution. The foot of their driveway is almost constantly a puddle of stagnant water just glistening with oil and who knows what industrial waste. It always happens in the movie, so now I’m bound to have giant killer beetles swarming my house in a matter of days.
Alternately, he’ll die from the pollution. Or my dog’ll eat him. She does that sometimes, eating insects.
Beetle schmeetle! You are the NinjaChick. Show it some Kung Fu, babe!
AH! The beetle is DEAD , yes?
This guy here scare the hell out of me 2 weeks ago in my garage. I don’t usually see bugs this big, so I took a pic! Did it look like this?
The only cool beetles are rhinoceros beetles. I found one once - Dr. Theopolus put it on the dash of my car once to surprise me and hear me “eek”.
He heard an “eek” alright.
Similar, yeah. But to me, most beetles generally look alike. I could tell that it wasn’t one of those cool shiny green ones (Japanese beetles, I want to say), nor a lady bug, but that’s really as far as my beetle classification skills go.
What’s a rhinoceros beetle? Big, I’m assuming.
Very cool, NinjaChick! A couple of days ago, I was sitting on the stoop of my condo, and I saw a big ol’ carabid (or possibly long-horned) beetle on the side of the building. I picked him up, and he BIT me! Ow!
I put him in a plastic bag, thinking maybe one of the entomology grad students might like it (they need to make a bug collection as one of the requirements for graduation). He ran around the bag, and I started thinking that he might be able to chew his way through with his impressive (and painful) mandibles. My nephew, who was staying with me, suggested I put him in the freezer with all the other dead stuff.* But I felt sorry for him and put him back outside on the wall. When I went out later on, he had moved toward my neighbor’s front door. Neighbor came home, started up his steps, saw The Beetle, and said “Whoa!” while taking a step back. Yeah, he was a big bad boy.
I found this on the ceiling of my basement last night. It gives me the creeps.
I had never seen one of those IRL ever until about a month ago. I was in the break room at work, having come in VERY early in the morning, and walked in to find one on the wall - about 4 inches long, with huge waving antennae, which looked very angry and showing no sign of skittering off.
I wished I had a camera with me, then I considered killing it. However, I was angry at the world in general for having to be in at work so early, so I said “Screw it, let someone else deal with that monster.”
About 10 minutes later, a secretary who came in early went to the break room. I didn’t see her go, but her trip was made known to me by a sudden
“EEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEeeeeeEEEeeEEEeeEEEEEe!!!”
followed by the sound of something metallic falling. I never found out what happened, but it was gone later, so it’s all good.
Parental Advisory, man, I’m so jealous! Your pic shows a female Stag Beetle. As you see, the male’s mandibels are even more impressive, they resemble a deers antlers, hence the name. The mandibels can’t really hurt people (maybe squeeze a little, at most), they are just used to impress and fight off other males in a sort of wrestling game (the beetle who manages to upturn the other beetle first, has won). They live in forests, because the larvae live in rotting wood.
Oh, I’m really jealous. You had one in your garage! In Europe, the Stag beetle is heavily protected. Hundreds of thousands of euro’s are spent to save the existing populations, or to regain the species to the area’s it got extinct in. That’s the Rolls Royce among beetles, and there are probably fewer Stagbeetles then Rolls Royces left in the world. In YOUR garage!!!
In France, I once say males flying about. Heavy 3-4 inch beetles flying in low circles. Now, that is a TRULY impressive sight.
There was an old man from St Bees
Who was stung on the nose by a wasp
When asked “did it hurt?”
He said “Yes, it did!
But I’m so glad it wasn’t a hornet!”
[sub](The linked picture is called ‘wasp’, except it is a picture of the giant bumblebee sculpture at the Eden Project in Devon, and this thread is about beetles anyway)[/sub]
