Bug Squad

Big Red visited us for four consecutive days. The red flameskimmer dragonfly, Libellula saturata, zigged and zagged into our pollinator garden in Vacaville, Calif. and perched on a bamboo stake for five hours at a time.

The world's most dangerous animal isn't the shark, wolf, lion, elephant, hippo, crocodile, tsetse fly, tapeworm, assassin bug (kissing bug), freshwater snail, dog, snake or human. No, it's the mosquito.

Have you seen me? Can you identify me? No, you're a skipper, but which one are you? The colorful brown skipper butterfly that touched down on our Jupiter's Beard in Vacaville, Calif., on May 17 puzzled us.

Yes, bears raid honey bee colonies. But it's primarily for the bee brood, not the honey. The brood provides the protein, and the honey, the carbohydrates. For beekeepers and commercial queen bee breeders, this can wreak havoc. Financial havoc.

So there we were, on Mother's Day, looking at the yet-to-bloom English lavender in our yard. And there it was, something golden staring back at us. It was showing a face that "only a mother could love"--or an entomologist or an insect enthusiast. Scathophaga stercoraria, the golden dung fly.