Bug-Lover's Club

[Kestrad]

Ew, Japanese beetles. They used to mass in front of my house and eat my mom's grape plant until the poor thing only had fibers left instead of leaves. One landed on me when I was resting from roller blading once. I think I screamed and tried to run off, forgetting that I had roller blades on, and wiped out epically.

Looking back now, though, pesks that they were, they still had really pretty bodies. Irridescent green-bronze, if I remember correctly.

@Cass: That sounds terrible.

[Byakugan01]

Yup. You're forgetting the descriptor "hard" bodies. Those things were like little terminators-not sure our local spiders can even eat them. All I know is nothing was particularly suppressing their population until my grandfather put up a pheromone trap. By that point they had already devastated the rose bushes though. I think something's been released to deal with them though. Forget what-think it might have been some disease that affected them.

[Piney]

I haven't even seen Japanese beetles until my ecology class last semester, when we went hiking around campus. I thought they were purdy but I didn't know they were invasive. And destructive. You know one bug I don't like though? June bugs. They get EVERYWHERE.

[Kestrad]

Oh, we put up pheromone bags to get rid of them. They didn't work.

Then one year we were too lazy to put up the bags and they didn't come back after that. 0.o

[DoomedDaphnia]

Guh, nothing quite like eating cereal and only finding out afterwards that it's got beetles in it. I can't eat miniwheats any more...

I think I would flip the table I was sitting at if that happened to me

Oh, we put up pheromone bags to get rid of them. They didn't work.

We tried this one year and promptly stopped the next. They were smelly and nasty as hell if they broke

You know one bug I don't like though? June bugs. They get EVERYWHERE.

I find them mildly irritating, but mostly because they have all the flying grace of cicadas

[Byakugan01]

Well, the bags my grandpa put up were not "nice" bags. they were "lure them in and then kill them deader than dead with chemicals" bags. Made them much more effective.

June bugs? I'd feed them to my spider if I wasn't scared of accidentally poisoning her with pesticides. We do get them inside the house sometimes, but never too many. I'd swear that they climb up the drains. Speaking of cicadas, I've only seen them once, and they were in a jar. They don't live on our property-none at all-or even around it, so I don't get to see what it's like to have those huge emergences. I envy those who do-it must look quite impressive.

Edit: Ah, we did not get Cass's creature...oh well.

[Padfootsmistress777]

We get cicadas but we hear them more then see them, we'll occasionally see their husks (?) And once in awhile a live one roaming around...

[Cassowary]

Blues couldn't make a description in time. Oh well

Lots of cicadas around here. The "husks" are the shed exoskeletons from their nymphal forms.

Whenever the Japanese beetles are out en masse I'm tempted to go out and see how many I can fit into a jar... or a bag... or just how many I can catch, overall. I wouldn't know what to do with them afterwards, though. Bug ornaments?

[Byakugan01]

If I were you, find a patch of wild rose and set them loose. Both are invasive, so it's win/win. Is it all possible to expect to see them in the future? The one you made as a regular stream creature, I mean.

That's the one thing I've ever found-the husks. And not here at home, but at a park at least 15 miles away. I used to try and collect the husks, but they disappeared for some reason...I have a hunch that they got thrown out by accident. I never have been the neatest with my "collections". How many different intervals of emergence are there for cicadas anyway? Only one I know offhand is the seventeen year one.

[Padfootsmistress777]

I never collected cicada husks, I like listening to them...as long as I haven't just woken up X3

And I have no idea but the ones by me are around every year, so either every year is a 17 year interval for a group of cicada (which I guess isn't that impossible owo) or they just annually pop up Which is why when I first heard about the 17 year emergence I was like "huh? but I see/hear them every year "

I've never seen any Japanese beetles (as far as I know owo) though at my old high school just about every Ag-related class room had a notice about them

I actually found the husk of some bug...I think it was a beetle (there is no 'a' in beetle, we're not writing about the band here Padfoot), or maybe it was just dead *shrugs*, while on a class trip, on the way back to the school this chick flipped out, snatched it from my hand and tossed it out the window