Digging in the soil can reveal some strange beings that you can't imagine living there. One such thing is a beetle grub. Not only does this pest eat at the roots of vegetables but it is also a pretty rancid looking thing in its larvae stage and not something I would like to see a lot of. It is known as the Cockchafer or May Bug (Melolontha melolontha) and has a four-year life cycle. It has only one month as an adult beetle.
At the weekend, we found two of them, a couple apparently, one which was in the process of egesting whatever it had eaten. As you can see they are quite big and fat, juicy targets for birds and they explode when pressure is put on them by the sole of someone's shoe. This is exactly what happened to one of the ones we found but the other one got away.
This was just part of the fun I had this weekend, the other involved weeding large areas of land to save the poor strawberries that were being strangled by these unwelcome invaders. If all goes well, our efforts will be rewarded soon and we can enjoy the tastier fruits of nature.
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