Two days ago, while doing some gardening, I spied something unusual on the surface of the dirt in one of the pots: a strange, egg-shaped piece of dirt with a fat white grub attempting to crawl out of it.
I've seen these grubs before, although I have no idea what they are. Growing up in Kempsey, our family dog, Scruffy, had a taste for them, and would sniff them out like truffles before scratching up a patch of lawn, retrieving his prize and carrying them away to eat. As kids we always referred to them as 'witchetty grubs', those being the closest approximation. Once, my brother and his friend even roasted some on some coals or a fire and tasted them. I didn't try one, but they smelled like burned mutton fat- not my cup of tea, but not that unappetising, either.
I've seen them here in Brisbane before in our plant pots, too. I discovered a few dessicated corpses when I uprooted the drescina in a pot I was appropriating for pak choy. There were also a couple of live ones, which I offered to Feifei (unsurprisingly, he refused) before leaving them on the balcony in the hope a crow would come by and eat them. A day or two later they were still there- one had died and the other, still helpless, I brushed into the garden below.
I've never before seen the grubs in any kind of cocoon or housing of any kind. This one was attempting to leave its hard dirt 'egg', but its rear end was too fat to fit out the small hole. I fetched the 'egg' out of the pot, whereupon the grub decided to go back inside. I poked it with the corner of a dead leaf and it lunged at the leaf, attempting to bite it. Eventually it got so agitated it tried to leave, and I was ready with the camera... in the end it was still too fat to haul itself out, so I picked up the 'egg' and held it close to the back of one of our balcony chairs, which are made out of some plasticky woven material. It was able to grip the material and with significant force, haul its fat little body from the egg. On the ground it was quite helpless, better able to 'walk' on its back than it was right-way-up with its legs on the ground. I pondered tossing it into the main complex gardens, but I felt a bit sorry for it so I placed it in our herb pot out the back.
2 comments:
Looks like Rhinoceros beetle larvae usually found in compost and loved by pooches.
Nicky- I just looked it up, and you're right, it does. Thing is, although I've seen quite a few rhinoceros beetles in Brisbane, I don't ever remember seeing one in Kempsey. What's more, the larvae in Brisbane are about half the size of the ones in Kempsey- do you know where I can find a reference to the distribution of rhinoceros beetles in Australia, by any chance?
Interesting that dogs like them!
Post a Comment