Aaahh! Zombie Mouse!
OK, so on Wednesday, June 13[1], there was some stuff I had to haul out of the basement. The basement has one of those outdoor cellar entrances, with a slanting hatchway covering a set of concrete steps leading down. Since this was the best way to haul out bulky things, I opened up the lid . . . and saw . . . a dead mouse laying on the stairs [2]. Ok, kind of nasty, but not too bad, except . . . then . . . it started to move. Not just a little motion, it hopped up, rolled over, and fell down to the next step! Gah!
And then, the cause became obvious. These two large [3] beetles disengaged themselves from the corpse and scurried off.
This time, we have several different individuals of a single species. First, in April, we started occasionally seeing worker ants in and around the house, like this one:
This is pretty clearly a black carpenter ant, Camponotus pennsylvanicus. As ants go, these are pretty big, about 8 mm long. It is possible to get them to bite, say, the edge of your fingernail, but they don’t so much hurt as just hang on. Anyway, after seeing these for a while, this next one showed up on the kitchen floor, so I refrigerated her for photography:
We found these two stink bugs on the lilac bush in the front yard. They were very focused on the task, and stayed coupled the whole time they were being handled and photographed.
I tried to get a side view, but they were big enough that it was hard to get them completely in focus with the macro lens.
My, Grandma, what big mandibles you have!
This one I did *not* find in the house![1] It was out front, crossing the road[2]. It was strong and fast, and I had to hold onto it pretty firmly to get that face shot.
After a long strech of arachnids here, I think it’s time to get back to insects. This one we found on the kitchen window. She’s evidently a common yellowjacket, Vespula vulgaris
Given the time of year, she’s certainly a queen yellowjacket that was looking for someplace to establish a nest. I quieted her down for photography by putting her in the refrigerator for a bit, she then sat still for several minutes until she warmed back up again. Just for grins, here’s a closeup of her head:
Well, once again, it’s Tick Time. They hang out on tall objects (mostly dead weed stems and the sides of buildings) with their little front legs outstreched, and grab on when someone brushes past unsuspectingly. They don’t bite right away, so we usually find them when they are still crawling around looking for a place to latch on (at this time of year, every little tickle and itch becomes suspect). The ones we have around here are good old Dermacentor variabilis, which some people call a “dog tick” and others call a “wood tick”, while just about everybody calls it an “eeewwww” when they find it crawling up their leg.
What timing! I’d just gotten the camera mounted to take nice, high-magnification photos of tiny things, and then S. tells me there is a pseudoscorpion in the bathtub, just *begging* to be photographed. So, here it is:
Then, we flipped it over to have a look at the underside:
And then, finally, zoomed in on one claw:
Considering that this little guy was only about 3 mm long, I think the photos came out pretty sharp. We figured that this should be good enough to get a full, positive ID, so I found an identification key to the pseudoscorpions of Michigan in the MTU library[1] . . . and had my illusions pretty much dashed. It turns out that you distinguish pseudoscorpion species from each other based on very fine details of the claws, and where exactly the sensory hairs (setae) are located. Unfortunately, even though the claw detail photo is pretty good, it isn’t good enough to count setae. According to the author of the ID key, even an expert might take as much as a week to prepare, dissect, and examine a pseudoscorpion to determine the species. There are supposed to be at least 29 species in Michigan, so the next ones we find might get taken in to the lab for a more thorough examination.
While a really positive ID isn’t practical from these photos, the fact that it was in the house (and, specifically, in the tub) means it was almost certainly Chelifer cancroides, also known as the “house pseudoscorpion” or “book scorpion”. This is a “cosmopolitan” species, meaning that we have carried it around the world and it pretty much lives everywhere that humans live. They are actually very common, but are rarely seen except when they, say, venture into the bathtub to get water. They spend the rest of their time eating other, even smaller arthropods (mites, clothes moth larvae, and the like), and generally get dismissed as being harmless and of no economic impact. They are reported to live for 2-3 years, which is pretty good for such tiny creatures.
The spider below had made a minimalist mesh-style web on the frame of our back door, so I took a bunch of pictures in-place with the improvised macro lens. By bracing against the surface of the door and taking lots of pictures, I managed to get a few that showed decent detail, but it was a lot of effort. Keep in mind that this is a little guy, only about 5 millimeters long. If there had not been a surface to brace against, there is no way I could have held the camera still enough to get an unblurred photograph.
But, not to worry! We have so much forgotten junk in the lab, there must be something that can be used to hold a camera steady, right?
Right! I would like you to meet “The Beast”, about 10 pounds of the finest brass machining the 19th century had to offer![1]
I found this old microscope frame stuck away in the back of a cabinet, along with a bunch of other microscope parts that were probably scrapped out sometime before I was born. This one was obviously the stage and mount for a dissecting scope, the mount is a nice 3-dimension positioner, moving up/down/forward/back/left/right with several inches of travel in each direction. With a bit of adaptation (mainly just getting a 1/4-20 capscrew to mount the camera, and drilling one hole so that the screw would fit), the camera and macro lens mounted up just fine.
This week, we have another one that can be positively identified down to the species. It is an Indian Meal Moth, Plodia interpunctella. These are commonly referred to as a “pantry pest”, and we found this one (surprise, surprise!) in the pantry. They came in to the house originally in some infested birdseed from WalMart, and they’ve been around at a low level ever since. They feed on dry grains, flour, and similar materials.
There are two photos here, because of focusing issues with my setup for small items. The first one has the head in focus, while the second is focused on the trailing edge of the wings.
Ah, the simplifications of death . . .
On the photography front, it turns out that death greatly simplifies things. I found the green lacewing (family Chrysopidae) below as a tiny, pathetic corpse hanging in a corner near our front door, where it had been caught in a spiderweb sometime last year. All things considered, it was pretty well preserved, and it certainly wasn’t going anywhere, so I could photograph it to my heart’s content. The only downside was that, since it is (a) dried out, and (b) a bit encumbered with spider silk, it isn’t really identifiable down to the genus or species level. Lacewings are very 3-dimensional because of the way they hold their wings. Since close-up photography has a rather limited depth-of-field, it was hard to both see the wing detail, and the body. So, there are two pictures, the first concentrating on the wings and the second on the body. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find a lacewing larva sometime this summer, they are interestingly evil-looking critters.
