The Last Thing I Saw....

Stag beetles are pretty laid back around non-stag beetle species, but you've already closed the browser, haven't you?

I let it live. It's still out there...somewhere. MWAHAHAHA

The Last Thing I Saw....

I Must Share The Horror

I made the picture as small as possible, but you can click it and make it bigger if you like to freak the hell out that things in pictures are coming through the screen to get you like I do.

I apologize for this, I really do.

But this latest catch of Domo-Kun the sunscreen, it was the largest thing since that bird. We'd just come home from gathering food and it's customary to dump certain things on the table between the house and the basement, while we figure out where to store the teabags. I was carting the bag of cat food into the house when I heard Mum say, "Look at that thing," and Nan agreed in the similar tone of someone witnessing something existing that should not be. I wasn't at all well, having injured the arch of my foot jamming on the brake after I zoned out and nearly ran a red light. So I stepped back outside not really interested in what I was going to see.

And then I saw it.

I've seen hornets before, yellowjackets are regular occurances, and the occasional large beetle buzzing along the roof of Domo-Kun hardly makes me blink anymore. But there was this great big three-inch long vespid instrument of fear trying to figure out how to escape the same sunscreen I too happened to be trying to get the hell out of as quickly as possible.

Of course I ran for the camera. Having the camera in between me and something that has a face and is looking at me sort of makes it all better...almost. Taking the pictures, though, I realized this mutant only wanted to get back out to its life.

So I unzipped the far panel of the sunscreen and guided the hornet out with a rake. I hope it remembers and calls off the invasion because we're mostly nice blokes.

In apology to you, dear reader, Natalie Dee's Megabee is way cuter to look at and explains how something like this ended up in my sunscreen.

I Must Share The Horror

Every Time The Sun Rises, Domo-Kun Eats Another Bee.

The ladies who really wanted that ginormous brown sunscreen just outside the back door have sat in it a total of...an hour? The Puppy gets more use out of it, laying under the table in the dim brown-tinted sunlight.

To the right, you may be rather displeased to see what I believe is an extraterrestrial harvesting scout. I've seen a few of these over the years, once when I was twelve and much more likely to react by recklessly hurtling through the air to get away from The Thing On My Leg.


The weird-ass bugs that live in our neighborhood love it, though. Sure. They flock to it and can't get out, so we come out to a huge brown screened room full of flying insects. And ants. Sometimes the ants fly, too, but I haven't got the ability to take a really good photo of a flying ant. Bad enough the yellowjacket in the second photo went on to sting my Puppy in the foot. I think. They all look alike. They're also all dying by the sunscreen-load every day. I've had seven yellowjackets go to the great lawn and leaf bag morgue this month.


I can't be afraid of these things anymore when they're so fragile that the appearance of a great brown nylon thing kills them. Maybe it gets too hot, maybe they just can't find their way out and commit bee seppuku, I don't know, but my inner rabid environmentalist worries about the future of bees when my backyard has brought more death to them in one week than overturned trucks and cell phone towers.

All these bees and flying maniacs are upside down in the pictures not because they're dead, but because they're hanging from the ceiling of Domo-Kun.


The cats love the way Japanese beetles (or jitterbugs, or "those noisy bastards that end up in the water bowl") collect inside the sunscreen. The final picture shows the record number (so far) of three armor-shelled, blindly bouncing beetles. I took that picture surrounded by Japanese beetles. Twenty years ago, I would scream and run indoors and stay there for three days if I heard one of them bouncing off the siding. Now, I rescued one that got tangled up in the tied-back panel of screening.

Of course the panels of screening are tied back. If we didn't tie them back the cats and dog couldn't get in and out. Or the birds. Birds have flown in. Luckily, they fly back out again and don't cook themselves on the sun-heated pipes.

I sat inside the sunscreen one day...it was hot.

Every Time The Sun Rises, Domo-Kun Eats Another Bee.

Dear Summer 2006,

You haven't even begun, and already you're pissing me off. Don't get me wrong, I know it's not really your fault, it's the lack of trees, and the over abundance of really big cars, and the smokestacks that give neighborhoods like mine mercury poisoning, but you're easier to blame. You're the one who everyone agrees is the cause of the high temperature that can be measured by that crappy old weather station in the corner of my yard.

It should not be 80° at midnight, didn't anyone tell you that? Anyone who says it's okay to leave the heater on past 9 o'clock at night is quite obviously a sadist with perfectly functioning organs.

Also, these things that follow you, like the progressive bee flies. What is that about? The sheets of cobweb I keep walking through are not entertaining either, and the bat cannot eat the mosquitoes fast enough.

Is it a deal you've worked out with Con Ed? You make it nearly impossible for people to survive without consuming mass quantities of electrical power, and who benefits from that?

I humbly request that you leave your duties to your allies, spring and autumn, and leave the world in the cool peace they've known up until now.

Sincerely,
The small dehydrated thing slapping insects away under the hedge.

P.S. Tell that winter pal of yours to quit fooling my trees into thinking January is the proper time to bloom.

Dear Summer 2006,