Although the picture isn't too good, I thought this beetle deserved an entry. I believe it is one of the bombardier beetles of the genus Brachinus. We found it under an old cast iron pot that was out in the woods. When we lifted the pot, it scurried to find cover and seemed determined not to have its picture taken. So determined, in fact, that it "shot" at us. When we tried to slow it down, it released an explosive cloud of some pretty foul-smelling chemicals from its back-end. We could hear a muffled pop and actually see the puff of the gas. Pretty impressive stuff. After taking a few pictures we lowered the pot back down and let the beetle get back to whatever it was doing before we so rudely interrupted it.
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I don't know if you caught my reference the other day, but if the naturalist in you also likes novels, you might enjoy Barbara Kingsolver's, Prodigal Summer.
As a matter of fact, I read Prodigal Summer and I enjoyed it. Kingsolver is one of my favorite authors.
Love these beetle colors. My sister and I were out Letterboxing the other day and came across the most striking orange spider in some thick brown/grey mud. Did not have my digital with me! She was beautiful! But no foul gas . . .
If you click on "anvilcloud" you can get my email address -- for now at least. I can guess that you want to put some links up there, but let me know for sure. It's easier to do this on email than in commments.
It's a link on my profile page.
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