Maybugs make me jump!

One of the things about lovely summer evenings when I’m upstairs working with the window open, I meet all sorts of wild life. Pretty moths, creepy daddy-long-legs (although they don’t often fly as high as my window) naughty mosquitoes… it’s a regular zoo in the computer room. Every so often there is a bang on the window as if someone has thrown a pebble which always makes me jump, but sometimes, like an incoming bomber, returning from a mission, a maybug whirrs in and clatters about a bit. I try to catch it and send it back outside but they are incredibly stupid and refuse to be helped. I usually manage to catch it in the end and chuck it back outside, but they are incredible creatures.

They are also called cockchafers (don’t laugh) and their grubs which are big and white and nasty eat roots of plants. The maybugs themselves used to be pests and destroyed crops on  a huge scale; modern pesticides have controlled their numbers and we no longer get swarms of them. I saw this large fellow – actually it might be a lady, on the kitchen window sill and took a photo with my hand in the picture so you get an idea of how big it is.