Blister Beetles

Note that the Pyrota featured in the previous entry to this venue is a blister beetle.  Before that, not long ago, we showed off a brown blister beetle.  The beetles featured in this entry are also blister beetles.  We have lots of blister beetles at the CB.  These all  black ones show up in the fall.  They hang on the broomweed mostly.   Sometimes they appear to be eating the flowers.  In the spring we have red ones, red and black ones and orange ones.

Ray took the trouble to catch these blister beetles because he wanted to show the size dimorphism between the sexes of this particular species.  However, that's hard to see in the photograph.  Yet the photograph is not a total loss because a new bug for the CB is included.  Apparently the bug is an early riser.  Because when Ray went back later, to get a picture of the bug in habitat, there were none.  No bugs.  Ray will try again early tomorrow morning if he remembers. 

All three vermin in this picture are in a jar.  To get them in the jar, Ray put the jar under the vermin, then tapped at the broomweed they were in with a stick.  Eventually all the vermin turned loose of the broomweed and dropped into the jar.  Getting the bug too, was totally lucky.

Ray did not want to touch the blister beetles or have them squirt cantharidin on him which is why he used a stick, a jar, and also wore gloves and goggles.  That's because cantharadin is an Afrodeeziac.  If you get squirted like in the eyes with cantharidin you could go blind, eventually.  And,  the juice could turn your sex organ big and black.  Which of course Ray definitely did not want to have happen to him, suddenly possessing a big, black sex organ.  Mercy!  How out of place would that look?