Kabutomushi

You may have noticed the posts are coming a little less frequently. That's because I've been busy getting ready for a month-long trip home to Canada. I leave this afternoon! (And after 20 hours of flying and stopovers, I'll arrive...  this evening! Crazy.)

I had a fantastic sending-off last night. Around 1:30 Hideaki was working and I was up doing last-minute packing when we heard a ruckus near our front door. At first we thought our neighbor had come home, then we thought one of the damn stray cats was in the garbage again, and then when we heard the beating of wings we figured the cat was playing with a bird on our doorstep. So I went out with the flashlight hoping to heroically set the bird free. But I couldn't see a thing, even though the noise continued seemingly right beside me. Creepy. So I got scared and made Hideaki look.

This is what he found:

A giant kabutomushi (rhinoceros beetle) stuck in our tree. It was ferociously powerful and its strong hooked legs refused to let go of the leaves (gee, maybe that's why you were stuck, stupid bug). Took Hide a few minutes to wrestle it off the tree and into this cage we had leftover from a few years ago (when we kept a few similar but much smaller bugs).

The forest in front of our house is home to quite a few of these cool bugs in the summer, but I've never ever seen one so big. Except in a pet shop. I suspect that it's an escaped pet that was imported from elsewhere in Asia (believe it or not there is a huge trade in these bugs).

I thought about keeping it, but with me leaving and all that would mean leaving it with Hide, who would surely kill it (along with all my plants). Just kidding. He pleaded for its release and I agreed- it's just too mean to keep such an impressive bug in a tiny cage. So we set it free.

Or at least we tried. After doing its best to escape from the cage, it refused to leave as soon as we went outside. Then Hideaki picked it up and it refused to leave his hand. Apparently it had fallen in love with him- it crawled up his arm and all over his back and for a good 10 minutes we tried to get it to leave. Finally I corralled it onto a piece of wood and it crawled off into the night.

I didn't manage to get a good picture, because it was dark and it moved pretty fast. Here's a blurry one of the bug on Hideaki's back.

Anyway, I'm off in a few hours. I will try to keep posting but maybe not all that often and I'm not sure if I can upload photos or not. But things will be back to normal when I get back in mid-August.

Hope everybody has a great summer!

Comments

[DakRoland]

Safe Journey!

[Evil Jungle Prince]

Have a great trip!

[santos.]

have a lovely holiday!

[Amy]

Thank you!