Last fall, there was a dung beetle invasion at a ranch in Milam County. It’s today’s featured re-blog (we’re waiting for more contributions from our fellow Master Naturalists).
This friendly looking guy is the gazelle scarab beetle. They like to eat poop and attack tack rooms.
It seems like every year we get a different plague. This year’s infestation was quite a surprise. And how it managed to infest our tack room was quite ingenious.
You see, the room where we store all the equine food, saddles, and other equipment may not look great, but it is very well sealed, so that mice and other intruders can’t come in and eat our delicious beet pulp and expensive supplements. It’s also air conditioned, so that the leather tack doesn’t get all moldy and icky.
I recently dropped some black sunflower seeds, and from a distance, they do resemble dung beetles.
So, yes, we were surprised this weekend when what we originally thought were black sunflower seeds that we’d spilled were actually a LOT of dead bugs. I uploaded a…
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