So here I am, sitting in Phoenyx HQ (a/k/a "the basement") when I hear something scrabbling through the papers next to my computer. My cat, on top of the computer hutch, is taking acute interest. Now, we've had mouse problems in the crawlspace and under the floor (the basement's ceiling), so I'm thinking mouse, right? Wrong. It's what an entomologist would call a FREAKIN' HYUUUGE BUG. That's the technical term. Now, bugs don't generally bother me (excepting roaches), although I'd really rather not share the house with them (excepting the spiders who are helping us out with the flies that dart in yelling "Woo hoo! Air conditioning!" every time we open the door). But BIG bugs, I don't care to have sneaking up on me, so I don't want to leave him to his own devices, and he's way too big to squish. He's sitting in a glass on top of my monitor right now. So I go poking around in my encyclopedia. It seems to best match the picture of an American burying beetle; a quick web search tells me they're nigh-extinct. I have a brief mental image of me having to explain to everyone, "The Phoenyx will be down for awhile. Our house has been declared a wildlife preserve and they won't let us in." But Nicrophorus americanus has an orange pronotum. This guy doesn't. He's apparently an orbicollis, a common burying beetle. http://collaboratory.nunet.net/fmnh/urbanwatch/hifi/fieldguide/beetles/nicorb.html (Trust me, the picture is actual size. Whooee.) These puppies bury dead mice, and if they can't bury them where they're at, they drag them off and find somewhere to bury them. I'm duly impressed. Provided he wasn't here because there's a dead mouse around somewhere. Hopefully he heard (probably through the housefly grapevine) there was air conditioning in here, and that's all. -- -------------------------------------------------------------- Listowner tools are found at http://www.phoenyx.net/listowners
