A PASSIONATE RECYCLER

You could call me that. I am the ultimate saver of all things that might have a future use as well as thinking up ideas on how to re-purpose. This morning I met another recycler. It was the new-to-my garden dung beetle. I have seen them on nature programs but never realized that they also lived in Texas. It was an easy identification although this may have been the giveaway.

Is it really true that dung beetles bury 80% of all the cattle dung in Texas? They are certainly having a really good go at this pile of deer poop. Maybe it is just the perfect consistency following the rain. Maybe by tomorrow they will have buried all of it.

There are two beetles working at this pile, one male and one female. This is the only species in the insect kingdom where the male helps with the young. But there was no rolling going on much to my disappointment.  Just dragging a poop back to the hole they had made and disappearing below ground.

They have removed all this soft, wet soil to create a burrow. The egg will be laid in the poop which acts as an incubator. When it hatches it will eat the poop ball and eventually emerge from the ground as an adult to fly away searching for a fresh pile of poop.
The benefits of their work are outstanding and they deserve more respect for the work they perform. They aerate the soil, adding notrogen and water and remove waste on which flies would breed,

The ultimate recycler. By the end of the day all the deer poop had disappeared. Thanks for cleaning up.