Eastern Hercules Beetle ~ Dynastes tityus

This enormous beetle (every bit of 2 inches long) ~ aptly named Hercules ~ is a female. The male has enormous horns. You can read about them here. This one is clinging to The Husband's rather battered thumb ~ hanging on for dear life. He found it in the kitchen this morning and kept it in a container for me to see when I got downstairs. After the obligatory photoshoot it went on about its life ~ outside. We generally seem to find about one of them per season somewhere in our house and we always wonder how on earth it got inside. The do fly, and are attracted to light, but still... We have screens! We don't leave things hanging open, generally speaking, or we'd be up to our ears in insects! Anyway. Here she is, and she's quite wonderful. I used to be afraid to touch things like this, but since I've been handling wildlife at WCV my fears about creeping things have become greatly diminished (even though insect handling isn't a feature of wildlife handling over there). Although I still don't pick up spiders any more often than I have to. There are limits.

And I am aware that I should be blipping either a squirrel or a flower today. But a Hercules Beetle is not an every day event, so it took precedence.