Critically Endangered
Around the World in 80 Days - Day 78
These are one of the animals that don't have a common name that I can find. That always makes me a bit sad because it seems they aren't cared about enough to be given a name. Sort of like having a pet cat and never deciding to call it Nacho or Petunia and always calling it "the cat". I did not find any written descriptions of this beetle. I did see one single picture used by every site that had a picture. It was I believe of a dead one. Not in the wild, but on a piece of white paper. I am just glad there was not a pin through the beetle. I decided to assume that it was the correct beetle. It is difficult for me to have too much faith, having entirely too often seen incorrectly listed pictures. These beetles only occur in one small forest area on one small island in the Azores. Deforestation is their biggest threat.
My husband is out mowing the lawn right now. I love the smell of freshly cut grass, but in my ideal yard there would be almost no grass at all. I think my husband would appreciate that too because he doesn't enjoy mowing. I love the concept of forest gardening. I would be happiest if our yard was such that we barely had to do anything to it, almost everything in it was edible, and it attracted bees and other animals galore. We are in a city, so we don't have a lot of property to make a large garden or anything like that. I want to have as much food producing plants as possible. I cannot do any extreme editing of the yard because of the blind dog, but I can gradually add plants in. Our dogs we have now like to eat grass, but they are nothing like the beagle we had long ago. He would always get excited when my husband mowed the lawn. My husband lets the grass clippings fall back onto the lawn rather than bagging it up. Our beagle would go out and when my husband was done he'd eat huge mouthfuls of grass. We said he was part cow, and that he appreciated my husband making a nice salad for him. It didn't make him throw up. None of our dogs throw up after eating grass. It seems to be mostly a desire to add fresh greens to their diet. We aren't allowed livestock, and our yard isn't big enough or I would have a goat. I have jokingly threatened to try and convince the city that a Valais blacknose sheep is a weird dog that likes to eat grass and is wearing tap shoes. Eventually, if we are able to move to the countryside somewhere (unlikely we can ever afford it in Oregon), I want some rescue livestock and will let them retire at our home.
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