Today’s beetle discovery 5pm.

If a ladybug lands on you, it’s supposed to be good luck. I wonder what it means when you find the largest brown beetle in Ulster County stuck to your blue canvas beach chair in your front yard. To verify its size, I called on my neighbors, Jimmy and Miera while also enthusiastically inviting passers-by to take a look. Rudy’s mother thought it wasn’t real. (But then it moved, and we all jumped). Another person thought it was a Japanese Beetle. Jimmy sized it at about ¾ of an inch long, but I think it was probably closer to an inch in size.

I wish Alan was a little older to appreciate my discovery, but he was more interested in playing “little guy” with his bus on the porch. Before the beetle flew and/or crawled away, I quickly ran to my kitchen and grabbed an old pesto jar and punctured some holes on the cap. I ran back outside and scooped the beetle into the jar. Having lived through three indoor snake incidents (3-5 feet in length), capturing a one inch beetle seemed uncomplicated. I added some grass (I’m not sure why, but it seemed like the right thing to do). This would be his temporary home until after dinner when I could study it more closely.

I placed the jar next to me while I snapped the green beans. So many questions entered my mind. As I tossed a raw green bean into my mouth, I wondered about what beetles eat. Was he hungry? I wondered about the role of beetles in our environment. Why did it land on my chair? Then I began to feel guilty about having captured another living thing. Was it scared? Did it want to go home?

After rushing through dinner, I excused myself so that I could research my beetle. My time is so limited these days, and researching beetles may not be the most appropriate use of my time, but it was worth examining. Imagine how I felt when I learned that there are “more species of beetles than species of plants! There are about 350,000 named species of beetles in the world and many more unnamed species. In the United States and Canada alone, there are almost 24,000 species!!”

Unnamed species of beetles? Where do I begin?

The closest I could estimate is that he is a bean leaf beetle. However, these types of beetles only measure at ¼ of an inch, and my beetle was much bigger. Not wanting to over think this, I deduced that he was most likely one of the thousands within this category.

Instead of trying to "name" my beetle, I decided to spend the rest of my time looking into the bigger beetle question: What is the role of the beetle? Why will they thrive even after human life becomes extinct?

Before releasing my beetle back to my front lawn, I tried to memorize his features (spotless and brown) so I could always remember my time with him. I’ll always wonder if he was one of those “unnamed” beetles waiting for a scientist to discover him under a rock in some exotic tropic island (or on a blue canvas beach chair). Just my luck!