Not a cat lady (allergic to everything that has fur), and not a bag lady (too much stuff to drag around in bags) – I’ll have to become a bug lady instead 🙂 I’ve always been fascinated my all kinds of creepy crawlies – with the exception of spiders – and the last couple of years I’ve pretty much become obsessed with them. Bees and beetles are my favorites, but moths and butterflies are also up there. And then there are snails and slugs. Awesome little guys. I’ve even knitted and crocheted quite a few slugs and snails, and I’ll probably make lots more!
Yesterday I commented on a picture someone posted on Facebook of a bunch of red and black bugs. I immediately though of Fire bugs, so I suggested that, even though the bugs in the pic had a white spot on their back that the Fire bug doesn’t have. Soon there was another comment that confirmed my suggestion, but I just couldn’t leave it. So I googled lots of different shield bugs and looked in my insect book, and there it was! Turned out it was a Harlequin bug (Lygaeus equestris). The next comment on Facebook (same person as last time) confirmed that this was indeed the correct species and congratulated me 🙂 These are fairly common in Sweden, where this person is from, but they aren’t found here in Norway, so I hadn’t seen them before. They are so cool!
Yeah, I want to be an entomologist – can you tell?
I borrowed a picture from Wikimedia commons in case you were wondering what they look like. Pretty, aren’t they?
Zombies, Hippies & Troglodytes 