I have a reel mower. Two of them, actually, and I love pushing it. I love plugging in my ipod and cranking the tunes while getting a sweaty workout. And it is a good workout, let me tell you. Especially going uphill. But two days ago, while the boy and I were mowing, he started getting weirded out by all these…bugs. Bugs don’t normally bother him. And I try to keep my screams to a minimum when I encounter bugs, so I usually scream (habit) and then call out in cheerful voice, ‘It’s ok! Just startled a little!’ So when I investigated, I found all these flying…bugs. Everywhere. I googled them. I googled, ‘tan, small beetle, farm’. Nothing. ‘Beige, beetle, Ontario’. Nothing. Ah, they’ll go away, I said to myself.
Yesterday, they were everywhere. I looked high and low for our usual insanity of dragonflies, but they weren’t really around. I chose to mow anyway, and after 40 minutes, I had to stop, because these disgusting things kept landing on me. Creepy. Small beetle. Tan. Orange, prickly legs. Still couldn’t find anything.
Today I sat down and looked up, ‘Insect Identification Ontario’. I scrolled through about 300 bugs, when I finally found it.
Behold. The rose chafer.
Isn’t it disgusting?
Guess where they lay their eggs? In sandy soil.
Guess what they eat? E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
They love roses. But I don’t have any. So they love grass. I have tons. They love fruit trees. I only have two. They love all flowers, all foliage and all vegetation. And they are ridiculously destructive. And get this: they kill chickens because they are toxic.
They skeletonize leaves. DAMAGE IS MOST SEVERE IN AREAS WITH SANDY SOIL.
Oh, how I cried.
Guess how you kill them?
1-lay out floating row covers (too late)
2- throw down some parasitic nematode stuff (I have 150 acres)
3- go out and collect by hand and kill them.
I cried some more.
Then I inspected my compound (incidentally, I need a nicer name than compound for my vegetable garden).
Oh, crap.
So. This is how you kill chafer beetles:
-don long jeans, long socks, long sleeves, hat and tall rubber boots. They fly, y’all.
-don long thick rubber gloves. Cause they squeeze ooze.
-large pail of super hot, super sudsy water
-psyche yourself up with loud, angry music. I recommend ‘Firestarter‘ by Prodigy. Because YOU ARE the ‘trouble starter, punking instigator, fear addicted, danger illustrated’ and YOU CAN dispose of them (I’m such a 90’s girl)
-convince boy to come out and help.
-after five minutes and capturing exactly two without vomiting, offer to pay the boy $100 if he comes out two times a day for the rest of the summer to collect all gross bugs and dispose of them.
you’re welcome.
