Time for Doodlebugs

A nice place to rest!

One of these came into the house last night. Well it probably made its way in stealthily during the day with us having the doors open in this unseasonably hot weather. These creatures are much more active at night - and so, when we'd gone to bed and turned the lights out it woke up to the fact that it was in a rather strange environment and, starting up its noisy engines, it began to fly in circles in our hallway thumping into walls and doors. Satisfying myself that this was not the noise a burglar would make I sallied forth with a rolled up newspaper and was confronted by what appeared to be a six inch long helicopter whirring around my head. I managed to heroically open the front door and usher it out into the night. It then sat down on the doorstep looking rather puzzled and smaller than I'd first perceived it to be.

Cockchafer Two coming in to land - do you read me?

These are not my pictures as I had neglected to carry my Canon around with me at the time but in the morning I identified this rather disconcerting insect as a Cockchafer and it's not quite as big as Britain's largest beetle, the Stag Beetle. Nevertheless it's still getting on for around a couple of inches long. If you think cockchafer is a dodgy name it's also referred to as a doodlebug and, according to Wikipedia it's also been called brazen clock, bumper, chivvy, cob-worm, doors, dumbledarey, humbug, June bug, kitty witch, billy witch, may-bittle, midsummer for, mitchamador, oak-wib, bookworm, snartlegog, spang beetle, tom needle and chwillen y bwm, the latter being the Welsh for a cockchafer. We do have some interesting and sinister names for beetles in Britain, you might have heard about the Death Watch Beetle but what about the Devil's Coach Horse Beetle, the Hogweed Bonking Beetle and, my favourite, the Whirligig Beetle. I did see one author describing beetles as the vultures of the insect world!

An early cruise missile.

The more I researched cockchafers the less terrified I was and I began to feel sorry for the poor blighters as they only live for a few weeks, their beetle stage is actually the culmination of a four year life cycle which is mostly spent in the larvae stage underground - their emergence to the surface of the soil takes place in late April and early May and, even more curious, they are all synchronised to appear in the same year. In other words you might go three years without seeing any at all. And once every 30 years or so there's plague of them where thousands appear all at the same time, wow! In case you've been wondering why I've included a schematic drawing of a V1 rocket it's because these German world war 2 rockets were known as Doodlebugs as they made a similar sound to the whirring of cockchafers as they cruised over the streets of London during the war. The time to hide under the table was when the sound stopped and the flying bombs headed down.