Don’t Harm This Bug!

House pseudoscorpion (Chelifer cancroides) in our kitchen | Insect species,  Wood trim, Insects

In real life, the bug in the picture above is very, very small. It’s the house pseudo-scorpion (Chelifer cancroides)–not an insect, but an arachnid–and is highly beneficial to us humans.

Jambo! Mr. Nature here, with a critter that’s mostly too small to be noticed, although it can be found in very many homes. And if you’ve got them in your home, you’ve got a good thing.

Pseudo-scorpions don’t harm us or our stuff, and here’s what they eat: carpet beetle larvae, clothes moth larvae, book lice… and bedbugs! (The USS Connecticut, desperately trying to fight off a bedbug infestation, could use twenty or thirty thousand of these little guys.) There’s a good chance you have them in your home but have never noticed them.

If you think you have a pseudo-scorpion, you probably need to look at it under a magnifying glass to be sure. If you can then see it’s not a pseudo-scorpion, it’s almost certainly something bad that you ought to get rid of. But if it does turn out to be a pseudo-scorpion, release it and let it go about its business.

I wonder how many bedbug or clothes moth infestations never got off the ground because of pseudo-scorpions.

Mr. Nature: Lacewings for Your Garden

In Bell Mountain No. 5, The Fugitive Prince, Wytt entertains himself by catching and eating lacewings, which people in Obann call “fairy flies.”

But he really shouldn’t, because lacewings are about the most beneficial insects you’ll ever meet. Their larvae eat all kinds of plant pests and parasites, and the adults pollinate your garden. Plus they’re exquisitely, delicately beautiful. You can buy lacewings to release in your garden; their services are always in demand.

You’ll see in the video how the female lacewing lays her eggs on silken stalks to protect them from getting eaten by predators.

And the adults have lovely golden eyes.

This is Mr. Nature, and this is more of God’s stuff.