Beetles

I just finished up a story of some beetles, and then, poof, it was gone while I tried putting in a picture. It's with some gnashing of teeth that I now write again.


Every morning and evening, the dog and my cat and I take a walk to the empty lot next door. I often wait in the shade of a tree, while the animals search the ground and grasses and bushes for news. The other day, I noticed that there was a line of iridescent beetles, each smaller than a baby's pinky fingernail, moving fluidly up and down the trunk of the tree, like ants often do. I guess that ants are going for food and taking it back to their underground nest, but I don't know what the beetles were up to.


The next day there were many fewer beetles, and I said to myself, "Huh" and thought about where they had come from and gone to. On the third day, I found them all clustered on the base of the trunk, in an oval less than a foot long, with just a few still making the trunk march. I stared and wondered.


 In lieu of an actual photograph of what I saw, here is a sheet of coleoptera, or beetles, photographed from my laptop screen. See the one at the upper right hand corner? That's mine, I think.