Lady beetle - Mulsantina picta
One of the feral apple trees about 100 yards behind the house has very “late” apples, that stay on the tree a loooong time. As in, as of now (mid-December, with a couple of feet of snow on the ground), it still has some apples that were too high for the deer to eat. The apples were actually getting ripe in mid-October, and one of them that I picked to eat had a deep crevice in its surface[1]. Down in the bottom of the crevice was this beetle:
