Critically Endangered
Around the World in 80 Days - Day 65
We've made it to Salt Lake, Utah. These beetles are from one small area in part of the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, also in Utah. They are predators, eating small insects. The beetles themselves are only about a half of an inch long, so they are not able to eat large prey, mostly eating things like flies or ants. They live for 2 years, and their population numbers fluctuate and seem to depend upon how much rain there is. Drought is their biggest thread, and second to that is off-road vehicles. The park they live in used to allow vehicles in the area the beetles are, and now I believe most of their habitat if not all of it has strict protocol to protect the beetles. Their numbers do seem to be going up now, so hopefully they will eventually get their classification changed to only endangered.
The painting didn't photograph well. On top of the colours I added some metallic watercolour paints. They are very iridescent, and really quite beautiful beetles. The sand they live on is a beautiful colour as well. Hopefully I will be able to have an art show and you could see it in person and see the shiny paint. I'm still waiting to hear back from tech support on how to get the link to work so anyone who wants to help support getting these framing are able to easily do that. I'm kind of running out of patience honestly. I've reminded them they are supposed to be helping me so hopefully soon, otherwise I will have to figure something else out. I didn't get a chance to make bread. I did work on a postcard for Ladybug's daughter. Her daughter is in boot camp for the air force, and I want to send her a bunch of goofy postcards to hopefully make her laugh or at least smile. We are out of ink though, so I have to wait until I get more of that and then I can inundate her. Hopefully not too much, I don't want to make her have to do extra push-ups for getting too much ridiculous mail. I'm putting them in plain white envelopes, no glitter, no fun stickers, nothing to make them stand out.