Boring beetle

“ The most obvious sign of a roundheaded wood borer beetle attack is the egg niches that some beetles chew on the outer bark or the white, splinter-like boring frass that can be found under the bark (fig. 3) . Larvae produce wide tunnels that meander under the bark. Holes that penetrate into the wood are most likely due to wood borer larvae. Emerging adults leave broadly oval to circular, cleanly cut exit holes (fig. 4) .
Management—Because roundheaded beetles do not attack healthy trees, management should focus on preventing attacks on recently dead or felled trees. ”

“ Far overhead shoot the strong-winged males, searching for their minute insect food, weaving glowing lines over all the shadowy landscape, and apparently heedless of all beneath them. Yet when the dim little beacon, hung out with the hopefulness of instinct upon the grass blade, is seen, all else is forgotten and the beetle descends to pay court to the poor, worm-like creature, so unlike him in appearance, but whose little illumination is her badge of nobility. The gallant suitor is as devoted as if the object of his affection were clad in all the gay colours of a butterfly ”

“ There was nothing but a swarm of beetles, walking about like men with shells upon their backs.
And now Tommy saw evidences of Bram's devilish control of the swarm. For out of the cloud dropped what seemed to be a phalanx of beetle guards, the military police of beetledom, and, lashing fiercely with their tentacles, they drove back all the swarm that sought to join their companions in their ghoulish feast. There was just so much food and no more; the rest must seek theirs further.
BUT even beetles, it may be presumed, are not entirely under discipline at all times. ”

“ So, you see, insects must step lively if they want to keep out of its clutches.
"The babies of some beetles, instead of liking nice, clean food, prefer dead animals. The mother and father hunt around until they find a dead mouse or bird; then they begin to dig away the earth under the mouse or bird and around it. Finally the poor dead thing is in a deep hole; then Mrs. Burying-beetle lays her eggs on it, and together they cover it up with earth. When the grubs hatch they find plenty to eat, and are soon big burying-beetles, like their mothers and fathers. ”

“ The beetles as a rule hunt by night only, and find their prey, as vultures do, by the sense of smell. When they first find it, the male hovers above it like an eagle, circling round and round, so as to point it out to his mate; the female flies straight to it, and buries herself without delay in the rich banquet.
But what becomes at last of the buried bodies? No. 3 will show you. The female beetle lays in each body about as many eggs as she thinks it will support. In a very short time the eggs hatch out, and the grubs begin to devour the abundant feast provided for them. ”

“ It is a dangerous ascent and the merest trifle may yet ruin everything. For see, a leg slips on a smooth bit of gravel! Down come ball and Beetle, all mixed up together. And the insect begins over again, with indefatigable obstinacy. Ten times, twenty times, he will attempt the hopeless ascent, until his persistence vanquishes all obstacles, or until, wisely recognizing the futility of his efforts, he adopts the level road. ”

“ Sometimes the burrow contains nothing but the well-sinker surprised at its work: sometimes—and not rarely—the hermit will be found embracing a small subterranean fungus, entire or partly consumed. It presses it convulsively to its bosom and will not be parted from it. This is the insect's booty: its worldly wealth. Scattered crumbs inform us that we have surprised the beetle at a feast. ”

“ We are too prone to think every thing noxious and unnecessary, if we are not fully acquainted with its use. "The poor Beetle that we tread on," serves to fill up an order of beings, as useful and proper in the economy of nature, as that of a partridge or a hare, whose preservation and increase we are so solicitous for. ”

“ It is not nearly so mischievous as many of its compeers, but sits for the greater part of the day on some chosen perch, and thence surveys the objects around. A passing bee or beetle, however, immediately arouses its energies: it pounces on them with unfailing certainty, batters them to a shapeless pulp against a stone, and swallows them leisurely. It will also catch mice, kill them by severe blows of the beak upon the head, pull them to pieces, and eat them systematically, rejecting the skin as indigestible and unsavoury. ”

“ When things are going well (which isn't often) he is gloomy and apprehensive of an early change for the worse. When the worst comes he positively beams over it. Difficult to say whether he enjoys himself more in an over-wet season, or in one of drought. His special and ever-recurring joy is the discovery of some insect breaking out in a fresh place. He is always on the look-out for the Mottled Amber Moth, or the Frit-fly, or the Currant Scale, or the Apple-bark Beetle, or the Mustard Beetle,—"Black Jack," as he familiarly calls him. ”

“ Perhaps we shall end by attributing our own logic to the insect. After all, it will be just as remarkable to see a wonderful agreement prevail between that which reason dictates to us and that which instinct dictates to the animal.
A grave danger threatens the Sacred Beetle in its grub state: the drying-up of the food. The crypt in which [26] the larval life is spent has a layer of earth, some third of an inch thick, for a ceiling. Of what avail is this slender screen against the canicular heat that burns the soil, baking it like a brick to a far greater depth? ”

“ This is a strong argument in favor of low heading and shady growth of the trees. The parent of the borer, a long, green or pale brown beetle, may be caught and destroyed, but it is not to be presumed that all the beetles can be caught; it becomes necessary to examine the trees quite often, in order to destroy the worms hatched from the eggs of the uncaptured beetles. ”

“ Panic seized the human herd, grovelling for shrimps in the sandy soil with its tufts of red grasses. Milling in an uneasy mob, they cowered under the lashes of the antenna of the beetle guards, which sacrificed their backs through their hair garments whenever any of them tried to bolt.
Nearer and nearer came the beetles, louder and more penetrating the shriek of their rasping legs. Now the swarm came into sight, rank after rank of the shell-clad monsters, leaping fifteen feet at a bound with perfect precision, until they had formed a solid phalanx all around the humans. ”

“ At one time it is provided with an egg, at another it is eaten, while no accident ever happens by inadvertence to the exactly similar pills kneaded by the Copris.
That the insect, finding itself in this mixed assembly, should rip open what is still inanimate matter and respect what is already a cradle, that it should discriminate between the lawful and the unlawful, in circumstances such as these, seems to me incapable of explanation, if there be no guide but senses resembling our own. It is useless to say that it is a case of sight: the Beetle works in absolute darkness. ”

“ It soon becomes tame, and walks about the floors of houses picking-up scraps of food, or catching insects, which it secures by walking gently to the place where they settle, and spearing them with its long, slender beak. It allows itself to be handled by children, and will answer to its name "Pavaõ! Pavaõ!" walking up with a dainty, circumspect gait, and taking a fly or beetle from the hand.
We made several shorter excursions in the neighbourhood. ”

“ In four or five weeks a numerous family has to be housed and victualled, which puts the sinking of a deep pit that requires time and patience quite out of the question.
In any case, precautions will be taken against the dangers of the surface. Once its family is settled, the unprotected adult insect is obliged to establish its winter quarters at great depths, whence it will emerge in spring accompanied by its young ones, like the Sacred Beetle; but neither the egg nor the grub needs this costly refuge in the wet season, being well protected by the parents’ industry. ”

“ Adult of the old house borer.
Adult of the red-shouldered shothole borer, a bostrichid beetle.
Cover: Adult of an anobiid beetle, Xyletinus peltatus, and pine sill damaged by larvae of this beetle.
The adults of many kinds of powder-post beetles bore circular holes to the surface of the wood and emerge; others make oval holes. Some emerge in early spring; others, including the old house borer, emerge in early summer. Mating and egg laying follow. ”

“ In this voluptuous bed of stamens and petals he is encrusted, motionless; he remains there night and day, intoxicated by the heady fragrance, drunk with nectar. It needs the stimulus of fierce sunlight to arouse him from his bliss and set him soaring with a buzzing flight.
To watch the idle Beetle in his sybaritic bed, without further information, one would hardly suspect him of gluttony. What nourishment can he find on a rose or a cluster of hawthorn-blossom? At most a tiny drop of sugary exudation, for he does not browse upon the petals, still less upon the foliage. ”

“ One could easily imagine this mutilation to be the result of the insect’s hard work. Poking about, digging [39] and raking and slicing, at one time in the gravelly soil, at another in the stringy mass of manure, do not constitute a task in which organs so delicate as the tarsi can be employed without risk. And here is an even more serious matter: when the Beetle is rolling his ball backwards, with his head down, it is with the extremities of his fore-feet that he presses against the ground. ”

“ Yet this beetle can fold up and tuck his flying-wings under the short wing-cases.
He seeks a Home.
Most of the short-coated beetles are small. Some of them are an inch long. They are very lively insects. They are very greedy little creatures, too.
Some of these beetles eat only animal food. They are always busy hunting for it. Others of them are fond of mushrooms. Some of them have a bad smell. People do not care to touch them.
Since their hard shell coat is so short, it would be easy to hurt them. No doubt they have this bad smell to keep away creatures that would eat them. ”

“ As soon as cold weather approaches, these prudent insects retire from public life, cease from active pursuits, melt themselves up into a sort of organic pulp, lose almost every distinguishable organ or feature, and remain dormant, in a state of indefinite protoplasm, which gradually takes shape again as moth, beetle, or butterfly. ”

“ Now, just in proportion as the beetles and flies grow still more cautious, even the green lizards themselves fail to pick up a satisfactory livelihood; and so at last we get that most remarkable Nicaraguan form, decked all round with leaf-like expansions, and looking so like the foliage on which it rests that no beetle on earth can possibly detect it. The more cunning you get your detectives, the more cunning do the thieves become to outwit them.
Look, again, at the curious life-history of the flies which dwell as unbidden guests or social parasites in the nests and hives of wild honey-bees. ”

“ When I catch an insect I do it by throwing my tongue forward, out of my mouth. I have an idea the insects consider my treatment of them rather rough. If I didn't eat them, the wood-boring ones, would destroy all the trees. My bill isn't strong enough to bore in the hard wood; I only injure the bark, no matter what some people may say. The wood-eating beetles, caterpillars, spiders, daddy longlegs, grass-hoppers, and flies, are all grist for my mill—or bill, rather. ”

“ They were invariably rough lumps of food, fashioned in haste, with no definite internal structure, merely so much provender with which the Beetle retires to spend a few days in undisturbed gluttony. The dung-rollers covet and steal them from one another with a keenness which they would certainly not display in robbing one another of new family charges. For Sacred Beetles to go stealing eggs would be an absurdity, each of them having quite enough to do in securing the future of her own. ”

“ It is principally owing to the labours of these beetles that it happens that although you may see a dead mole, mouse, or bird lying in the corner of a field to-day, you shall look for it in vain next morning elsewhere than in a beetle-dug grave, as in the above instance. That a single pair of these comparatively small insects should be able to perform such a gigantic task in so short a time is, in truth, very wonderful, and must seem incredible to any one unacquainted with the habits and economy of the order. ”

“ The revolting workshop of the insect that manipulates ordure will lead perhaps to loftier ideas than would the perfumer’s factory with its jasmine and patchouli.
I have accused the Sacred Beetle of being an insatiable gormandizer. It is time to prove what I said. In my cages, which are too small to allow of much pill-rolling, my boarders often scorn to accumulate provisions and confine themselves to eating where they are. It is a good opportunity for us: the meal taken in public will tell us better than the underground banquet what a Dung-beetle’s stomach can do. ”

“ Like the eggs and young of other insects, however, those of the mole-cricket are exposed to depredation, and particularly to the ravages of a black beetle which burrows in similar localities. The mother insect, accordingly, does not think her nest secure till she has defended it, like a fortified town, with labyrinths, intrenchments, ramparts, and covert ways. In some part of these out-works she stations herself as an advanced guard, and when the beetle ventures within her circumvallations, she pounces upon him and kills him. ”