Today's garden adventure involved our first sighting of a squash beetle in our garden. Ell spotted a lady bug-looking beetle on the underside of a zucchini leaf this evening while we were watering and tending to the garden. I told her I'd take a photo and we'd come back inside and check it out and go from there. She said, "are you sure that's a lady bug? I thought when we were researching things, there was something that said it looked like a lady bug"... Well, the photos weren't that great (I didn't get that close because let's face it, I don't really like bugs) but I googled "orangish lady bug" and lo and behold - photos of a type of squash beetle came up. So I told Ell I think I'd found the culprit, after comparing the photos online to the photos I had and doing some patterning and counting. I grabbed my bug jar (a re-used Ragu spaghetti sauce jar) and and hobbled out to the garden to have a peek. Thankfully, the bug hadn't moved to another leaf, and I was able to quickly knock him into my bug jar. As he plunked down to the bottom, I saw the distinctive 14 black spots on the back of the beetle. At the moment I did that, I then saw the distinctive pattern they "cut" or "chew" out of the leaf. As I walked back to the house, beetle in hand, I was looking at him and got a good view-- it is in fact a squash beetle. Lesson? Collect the bug first, then research him, because if he's gone when you come back, you may never find him!
Because I felt like they look like they all hatched at the same time and they looked like they were on a mission. Little did I know they were on a good mission... as I would come to learn.
