The antennae on this critter!! I have found these in my garden before, and had trouble photographing their sweeping feelers that seem to reach over three times their body length. I did not realize that they are a kind of katydid and that the immense antenna length is one of the distinguishing factors between Katydids and Grasshoppers. It matches the abelia bush nicely too, with its stem-colored stripe down the back.

Well, maybe not a requiem – more like an enthusiastic wake. That’s not quite right either. I held the vigil, and the chickens crazed. Hm. Feeding frenzy. There is the phrase. The katydid really didn’t have a chance, clinging to the inside of the hardware cloth of the run. My hens are sharp-eyed surveyors of their enclosure, and most bugs are quickly snapped up and devoured. Grasshoppery things rank the most delectable apparently because it was an all-out war over parts. Thank you for supplementing the hens’ diet, katydid.

I was tending the chickens when I saw a neighbor’s kitten watching something in the meadow. From a distance it looked like an ironclad beetle, so I had to go look. The kitten spooked, but the beetle didn’t. It wasn’t an ironclad beetle; it was larger, and yellow with black markings. As it struggled to climb up stalks (it was too heavy for the slim stems), I snapped a couple pictures. The iNaturalist app provided an ID: Harlequin Flower Beetle. This particular beetle was almost an inch long!

Joy! I found another ironclad beetle! Alive! It was near the house, which is not a healthy place for insects, so I picked it up and relocated it out to some rotting wood at the edge of the meadow. It actually walked across my hand to move onto the wood, which was a cool experience. These guys are adept at playing dead, and to see it moving was very exciting. (Obviously.) This is the fifth beetle I’ve seen in the three years we’ve lived here.