Beetle Graveyard

My house has appently become where beetles come to die. I don’t know why there has been a sudden influx of the beetle elderly, and I don’t believe it’s because my residence somehow resembles Florida, but that is apparently what the retirement age beetle population believes.

They have come in droves. They flock to the windowsill in the kitchen; they gather in their dozens in the bathroom sink. They gasp their last in the balmy afternoon sun in my study and I have no idea from whence they come.

Perhaps it is the sudden appearance of springtime in Sunny Melbourne or maybe it’s because the Gurge have sequestered themselves in a plastic and steel bubble in Federation Square, but there is a frightening number of small beetles who have migrated in their final hours to my little abode. Do I have some bizarre magnetic attraction to geriatric beetles? Is it my new aftershave that draws them near? There must be something magical about my place of residence to the exoskeletal fraternity that causes them to gasp their last in the nooks and crannies of my little corner of the earth.

Yea, for there has been an infestation of late of little beetles, the genus I know not of, that seem to expire in the most unlikely of places. I have a little collection of beetle skeletons near my back door that is added to daily by the arrival of fresh specimens from the great beyond. They gather like dust on all the horizontal surfaces that can bear them, poor dears. I am intrigued as to why they should choose my house, of all the houses in the area, as their final resting place.

I’ll attempt to photograph their peaceful remains and see if I can’t figure out what they are, if not why they choose to come here to die. Lacking, as I do, the ability to speak their particular dialect, I am unable to ascertain why they feel so at home here in their final moments. I hope that by figuring out what they are that I might gain some little understanding of their maddening desire to decorate my home with their little corpses. I hope also that I might encourage them to think of my rear balcony as some form of beetle memorial ground. Then, at least, I might reduce the amount of vacuuming I have to do every week.

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