The Backyard Zoo

by Jim Dunlap

"Click Beetle"

Picture a flurry of excitement coming through the door! "Mr. Dunlap! There’s a beetle in the lobby!" Of course I joined in, "Great Beverly! Which one is it? I like Ringo!" Picture screwed up face.

Sure enough there was a big black and white bug enjoying the cool smooth floor tile near the side door. Somebody or something had touched him causing his feigned death routine before I picked him up. I retrieved the critter just in time because the next person through would have reduced him to the title of one of my favorite movies, "Beetlejuice."

The Eastern Eyed Click Beetle is one impressive bug. He grows to two inches long and is striking in his shiny black crunchy tux with small, white dot-like scales on his back. The shield across his head sports two large velvety black eyespots surrounded by a dense ring of white scales. Tammy Faye eat your heart out. When at home he prefers the soft rotting wood strewn, yes strewn I say, haphazardly across the forest floor. The adults seem to have poor appetites but the larvae, called wireworms, eat roots, seeds, or other insects. A bunch of them can make a truck farmer cuss.

Eggs are laid in the soil and pupate in cavities in the dirt or rotting wood. The adults are numerous in the spring and again in September, tra-la, tra-la. They get their clicks by flipping from their backs into the air, often landing upright. They accomplish this amazing feat to land on their feet by snapping a protuberance on the front part of their underside into a small groove in the back part of their underside.

The "playing dead" routine is an instinctive defense mechanism. I suppose the evolutionary wisdom here is that to remain still makes him look inanimate like a piece of bark. I placed him on his back and sat back to watch for the somersault. That was two days ago. Perhaps he is not just playing.

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