The night before we left for Canmore, we had a dead rodent in our yard - I think it was a mole of some kind as it was much bigger than a mouse. Anyway......Lloyd made me go and look at it (lol) and I noticed it was moving..so I caled him over and we pushed it with a stick to see what was moving it!! Ewwww! It was two beetles!!! Just two small beetles moving this HUGE dead rodent!! They had even dug a big hole underneath the rodent and They were stunning bugs!! Black with red markings - and as we love bugs at this house, we showed Sam and then we got our bug catcher and caught one and took it inside to look it up in our 'Bugs of Alberta' book!!!
It turned out it was a 'Burying Beetle' and they are FASCINATING!!! It is thanks to these little guys that Alberta is not covered in dead mice!!! they help eat up and bury all the dead mice and 'stuff' lying around - as well as help eat up all the bigger dead stuff! Just two of these little guys can bury a huge dead rodent!!! They can even move a dead rodent to somewhere more suitable to bury!!! Wow!!!
www.earthlife.net/insects/nicrophorus.html
www.royalalbertamuseum.ca/natural/insects/bugsfaq/burying.htm
We carried the beetle back out to it's 'mate' and let them get on with cleaning up our yard - and in the morning the rodent was GONE!!! :)
Aren't bugs the coolest???? Like they have their own little job to do!!! They are here for a reason.... :)
