Large black Beetles

I heard of someone get a wasp in his crash-helmet.

Owain

Reply to
Owain
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I'd answer that but I mite be wrong and that would never do!

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

They're edible though aren't they - if cooked?

Beetles probably would be too crunchy for most tastes

Owain who's just watched[1] Heston Blumenthal[2] make Snail Porridge[3]

[1] partaken of a televisual entertainment [2] by some accounts, the best chef in Britain [3] like I'm going to be able to walk into Tesco tomorrow and ask for two pints of snail stock with any expectation they'll have any
Reply to
Owain

I once had a veil full of honey bees ... you only leave your head covering unzipped once :-)

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Well I'm sure we've eaten them and we're still here - sorry and all that!

I guessed - I'm getting good!

I've heard of him. See - I even know it's a he!

Make your own. I'd offer you our snails but the hens use them as conversion currency.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Yeah, me. Horrible thought still lives with me till this day.

(/me shudders at hearing that weird buzzing sound in my ear again)

Reply to
BigWallop

OH OH!!! You'd better the beetles that then. There have been many sightings of foreign imports to this country in the last few decades, and they all seem to be thriving.

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gives a few bits of info' on these bugs, and the whole site has many pages full of the different creepy crawlies you'll find on our shores.

Reply to
BigWallop

My DuckDo won't do. It just sits there staring at the sky. :-)

Reply to
BigWallop

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk wrote in news:1121209534.575431.10420 @g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Tonight I saw my first ever Horntail (aka Horsetail or Wood Wasp - Urocerus gigas, I think), on our kitchen curtain. I thought that the ovipositor was the most frightening sting ever. But apparently harmless to humans.

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would hate to meet one of these in the bathroom!!!

Reply to
Rod

They're smart enough to know already.

So what ? They're not eating rotten roof timbers though. The powder-post beetles (and their kin) will _avoid_ damp or rotten timber.

It's an interesting but very partial site (for instance there's nothing on the longhorn beetles, which I have a houseful of - or on why this doesn't worry me)

I bet the OP's critter is one of these, or some other food-eating beetle, not a timber eater.

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's probably living in loftspace pigeon nests, eating either droppings or dead chicks.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

No. Most UK beetles will taste _disgusting_ (they do it deliberately).

In general, adult insects aren't edible, but insect larvae are. Grasshoppers, locusts and a few other well-muscled critters are one exception, butterfly caterpillars with deterrent toxins or irritants are the other.

There are also some beetles (even woodlice do it, and they're not even insects) that leave various chemical compounds behind (generally as pheremone markers) and some people can be sensitive to these. An allergy to woodlice, even leding to anaphylactic shock, isn't unheard of.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Harmless to Sigourney Weaver maybe.

OTOH, put yourself in the wasp's position. That's its knob you're talking about, not a sting. It may well feel quite protective about the thing and not at all likely to go jabbing it into critters who have evolved opposable thumbs to hold fly swatters with.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

Mary, you're obviously some sort of tree-hugging, green, eco-warrior type of person who doesn't like to kill any living thing and that's fair enough but you have to understand that some people are uncomfortable around bugs and some people are just plain frightened.

When I was 8 years old (now 47) I was unfortunate enough to somehow get an earwig in my ear whilst I slept. You cannot imagine how terrified I was to have this live thing "eating into my head" as I thought, and I was literally screaming the place down while my parents efforts to calm me down and get said offending insect out of my ear did little to placate me.

Consequently, I have been left with an absolute and abject terror of anything that creeps, crawls, slithers and is even remotely insect-like. I'm an 18-stone, 6ft male but I would rather move out of my house than share it with just one beetle, no matter how nice or unharmful you seem to think these creatures are, or how irrational you'll think my fear is. I'm afraid that, for me at least, it's a matter of getting them before they get me and a little more understanding on your part may not go amiss.

Mogweed.

Reply to
Mogweed

I don't see where Mary said anything about people not having a fear of creepy crawlies. She was only saying that these little creatures aren't the type that eat people, and that they shouldn't be treated as such and with so much fear to go all in war and destroy things to get at them.

Your incident was harrowing for you and I know how that type of fear of a situation can be, but Mary was trying to help in relieving the fear, not bolster it for anyone.

My own story is of being buried alive in a trench collapse. I was trapped in complete darkness for just over an hour. I had air to breath from a pipe which had luckily slid into the gap where my head lay, although I couldn't see any light through it. I now have a terrible fear of being in the dark. Real panic sets in, although I do try hard to fight through it. Anyone who tells me to stop being stupid doesn't know how these feelings really get to you. I don't go flaming them or shouting them down for not knowing how it feels for me. I understand that they have not experienced the feelings I have, and that they usually think they are helping. I just smile and nod and let them get on with.

Life's to short to try and make others feel your feelings. They never will.

Reply to
BigWallop

More like a Fallopian tube, really.

Reply to
Huge

Ahaaaa! An O'Brian reader, for all love! - ?

John

Reply to
John

Well, I don't think many are actually harmful. There are exceptions of course and I doubt that there'd be as much food value in insects as there is in larvae but if you eat something unknowingly most of the time it's not going to be a problem.

I wouldn't choose to eat weevils (irrational) which is why I sift old flour, float them out of lentils and pick them from pasta. But my eyes aren't what they were and sometimes I just get bored. I doubt that anyone would be able to differentiate between the odd cooked weevil and the black pepper grounds in the dish.

During the war we were given dried locusts as a special treat. They were sweet, otherwise unmemorable.

But not black beetles :-)

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

I've never seen one of these, sadly, I think we might be too far north.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Poor thing. I suggest it needs a whim-wham to pe-ak on.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

Even though it's harmless to humans?

You're unlikely to see it in your bathroom, it's unusual for them to go into a house.

Mary

Reply to
Mary Fisher

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