Last night a Christmas beetle flew into the house around 10pm. They're very noisy because they're quite big and robust and bump into everything. This one was a beautiful gold colour and I thought that it would be good to kill it rather than chase it out...so that we could marvel at it's colour from a 'natural history' perspective.
I trapped it under an egg cup and sprayed some fly killer under to do the poor thing in. It didn't seem to do much so I put in another dose, not wanting it to be a prolonged process for the thing. It still didn't die but seemed to be just arching around trying to keep going. I left it to die and went to work on my computer.
An hour later I went to look and it was STILL alive! Now I felt really bad, so I decided that I'd try to wash the stuff off it, and see if it could get better... and it seemed to be much better after that... not able to move properly, but I wondered if it would. I put it in a box to recover and left it outside.
This morning it was still there, still trying, but obviously unable to control it's limbs. I feel terrible! I couldn't bring myself to crush it, so I've drowned it. It's finally passed on. I know it's silly, but I feel a sort of respect for it. Poor thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment