Autumn in our garden 2013

These creepy little buggers, "engerling" as we call them, cockchafers in English, are ruining our lawn and the crows are helping them by digging them out. Grrr

In some areas and times, cockchafers were even served as food to people. A 19th century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: "roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". And a German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. A cockchafer stew is referred to in W.G. Sebald's novel The Emigrants.

French are known for eating strange things, but this.......... bah!