Apologies to Elaine Scarry for co-opting the title of her book for this post. As she's also a gardener, I hope she doesn't mind. I came across this beetle on my tomatillos while I was spraying away for cucumber beetles (which for some reason, in my yard, don't eat my cucumbers at all anymore, but devour my tomatillos wherever they sprout up.) Cucumber beetles are lovely, I should take a picture sometime, before I kill them. And they lay tidy little rows of angled bright orange eggs on the underside of my tomatillo leaves. So lovely until they hatch and turn into oozing fleshy maggots. I used to have a real hard time killing them until I saw them in that stage, but they do so much damage even my cruel bias towards beauty couldn't save them. And don't worry, they spray is organic. The kind of organic that eats through the shells of little cucumber beetles and dries them out. "Natural." Anyway I was on the hunt for cucumber beetles when I came across this lovely.
I of course let him live because there was only one, and he couldn't mean any harm, sitting there glistening so pretty. I saw him later in the day over by the door, suspiciously close to the arbor. Little did I know he is in fact a Japanese beetle, responsible for turning about an eighth of my grape leaves to lace. (They eat out the leaf flesh but leave the vein structure intact). I discovered this only later while researching the source of a seemingly unrelated gall on another grapeleaf. I'm still not sure if I could have brought myself to kill him. My grapes are still thriving and every year it's been the same - just some of the leaves, not all. But truth be told, if I found him in some grubby or multiplous stageI wouldn't be so logical or forgiving - it's his beauty that leads me to be fair, if I can call it that.
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