Mysterious Bug
Location: California
August 2, 2011 12:27 am
Hey guys, I was recently out walking in my backyard and I found this bug squirming on its back. It was an interesting looking one and so I thought I would post it here and see what you guys have to say about it. Every time I flipped it over, however, it would flip itself back onto its back and squirm there. I found another one that was running every which way searching for something. Then, I found another that was lying on its stomach flailing its limbs. After I did some digging, I found out that my neighbor recently sprayed his yard with poison, and apparently these things were caught in the cross-fire. How unfortunate, they are really something special with their size.
Signature: Josh

Palo Verde Root Borer

Dear Josh,
We are taking tremendous creative license with tagging your letter, because generally the person who submits the email is the person implicated in our tags.  In this case, we are charging your neighbor with unnecessary carnage, but not necessarily for just the Palo Verde Root Borer, Derobrachus hovorei, that you photographed.  We don’t know what was targeted by your neighbor, and perhaps he has a cherished Palo Verde tree that was compromised by a larger than usual population of Palo Verde Root Borers.  Adult Palo Verde Root Borers are not the damage producing phase of the insect.  The larvae are the borer and insecticide will most likely not penetrate to the root of the problem.   Sadly, insecticides are indiscriminate in the lives they take, and beneficial as well as injurious creatures may succumb.  Birds and Lizards might also become collateral damage by exposure to strong doses of toxins administered by an amateur.  You may read more about the Palo Verde Root Borer on BugGuide.

Palo Verde Root Borer

In The Sierra Foothills, A Bug.
Location: North Mariposa County, California
July 24, 2011 10:06 pm
I found two of these bugs in the past two days. One was floating in my teapot (which was full of water). The larger one’s body was about 4 inches long. They were both FULL of eggs. The eggs were the size of sesame seeds but looked like grains of rice. You can see them to the side of the squished bug. I have never seen anything like this before.
Signature: Squicked,

Ponderous Borer: Why was it squished???

Dear Squicked (does that rhyme with wicked?),
We run a free website and we reserve the right to exert our First Amendment right to free speech and voice our opinions when we feel justified.  Anyone who has spent more than five minutes on our website knows that we do not give extermination advice and that we promote tolerance with regards to the lower beasts.  We have a portion of our website that is devoted to Unnecessary Carnage, and we frequently come under attack because we believe that people do not need to kill things that they perceive might harm their children.  We have been called bleeding-heart hippies because we feel that sparing the lives of insects, including wasps that might sting if provoked, does not necessarily endanger the lives of children.  Everything that might sting, or might bite, or might scratch, or might annoy cannot be eliminated from our planet without drastically altering the world as we know it because there really wouldn’t be much left, including humans.  Threats abound, and children should be taught while they are young that certain things might hurt them, and those things should be treated with respect.  Now that we have made our position perfectly clear, we can address your question.
This is some species of Root Borer in the subfamily Prioninae, and we believe it is a Ponderous Borer, Trichocnemis spiculatus, which you may read about on BugGuide.  We cannot fathom what provoked this senseless slaughter.  All we have to base this feeling upon is the information you provided, and we suppose this Ponderous Borer might have been accidentally stepped on, but we somehow believe that there was intent behind the squishing.  There was no mention of children being endangered, and we are left with the opinion that this is probably one of the most egregious cases of Unnecessary Carnage we have ever encountered.  What we find especially troubling is the location you provided, the Sierra Foothills in Mendocino County.  We wonder if this was a state park.  State parks have rules and regulations about the preservation of natural resources, and that includes the lowly bugs.  Generally people who spend time camping have an appreciation of the natural world.  We sincerely hope we are wrong in our assumptions and that there is a justified reason behind this sad occurrence, but since your email indicates that two individuals “were both FULL of eggs” we can only surmise that the unfortunate creature that fell into your teapot met a similar end.
Readers, please provide comments.  Are we being too sensitive and too judgmental?