Buggy Post

The good kind of buggy, mostly. A collection of small beasties that have turned up here or in the neighbourhood in the last week or so.

One of our neighbours grows tomatoes. He doesn't have much sun, so he moves his plants (a whole row of them!) out to the sidewalk every morning, and brings them back behind his hedge at night. We walk past and inspect the ripening progress every couple of days.

On his first red tomato, last week, we found this beetle*:

It's black, with an orange rim, and greenish underside.

Captured, and brought home (the tomato grower didn't object) I got a closer look:

"Where's my tomato gone?"

I couldn't find this beetle on BugGuide, so I have submitted it to be ID'd.

*Update: it's not a beetle, it's a stink bug nymph, Chlorochroa. Thank you, Jim!

And I brought home from the church next door, a handful of weeds to decorate the kitchen table. Wild daisies, some tansy, a small yellow ray flower, etc. A few residents came along for the ride:

A tiny yellow inchworm.

A fat crab spider.

Zooming in. She is so transparent that the eye arrangement is laid out like a diagram. Only 6 eyes on this one.

In her ambush position. Just because she's beautiful.

And today's haul, one step outside my door:

A tiny, tiny, yellow spider, in a flower vase. That green stuff is the foam that the flowers were propped in.

Unidentified brown moth. Submitted to BugGuide.

Full-frontal view.

He has an odd protrusion on his snout. (A wart on the nose?) I've never seen that before.

And this was not a welcome find. Out of a crack in the bathroom baseboard, 8 carpet beetle larvae have crawled. Two had made it into the laundry basket. I killed these without the slightest qualm of conscience. These are the villains who make holes in my wool sweaters. No proper buggy manners at all.

Grrrrr!

As soon as things calm down around here (I hope by Friday), I will shampoo the carpets and upholstery again.
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