Turning Japanese

The poor wife! She went out early to mow the lawn (it's like 150 degrees outside, so she had to start early) and when she came in, it was easy to see she was all shook up. I mean literally--she was shaking bugs off of her, out of her clothes, out of her hair.....

Beetles were falling off of her. UGH!

We thought we had escaped the dreaded Japanese Beetle infestation this year....until our neighbor pointed out one of our poor trees in the back yard was basically a ball of beetles. Japanese beetles, to be exact. You know, the pretty little shiny beetles that stript the leaves bare on your favorite trees? Yeah, those beetles.

The wife lamented that the beetles were flocking all around her while she was trying to mow. She re-enacted how she was swatting while riding the mower and described how there are now hoards of beetles out there. Being the skeptic that I am, I took my chest-pained body out to the back yard, camera in hand. I figured if there were swarms of beetles out there, I'd get some photos and put them on the blog....



I am here to tell you--and I swear to you on a bag of Dove Dark Chocolate that this is true and not exaggerated--I could NOT get close to the tree. It was absolutely, positively disgusting. Those beetles were EVERYWHERE around the tree. I literally could not get close enough to take photos, even with the digital zoom. Those puppies smelled my Aveda hair products and came a-flying toward my head. I'm swatting and swearing and trying to get away from the swarm and they are chasing me and they are IN my hair. Thus, you are looking at photos from the Internet, not from our backyard.

You know those beetle bug bags? Ours is full. Full within twenty four hours. Busting full of beetles. Ever look in one of those things? All those beetles are crawling all over each other and they're buzzing and it's just kind of gross. The problem right now? We can't get near the bag to change it and put an empty one out there. Thankfully, I am on the injured reserve list, so I'm guessing I won't be the one trying to put the new bag out there. We're trying to figure out a way to cover the wife so she won't be personally touched by the bugs. Maybe one of those bee keeper suits.....I'll definitely get the camera out for that...