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Keeping Texas Wild!

While out and about yesterday afternoon, I saw this license plate:

I started to write those folks a note and leave it on their windshield and tell them if Texas isn’t wild enough for them already, I’m not quite sure what they may be wanting.  Snakes in my yard, giant lizards on the fence waiting to attack, vultures living on my utility pole, coyotes howling at night, giant rabbits in the woods . . how wild do they want it?  🙂

Maybe I should show them a picture of this beetle.  This is the hugest beetle I’ve ever seen.  That’s a quarter on my porch next to him.  Can you believe the size of bugs and lizards around here?

By the way, Vince asked the other day why there’s a quarter on the front porch and I said “For Comparison!”  He didn’t ask any questions.  I wonder if he knew what I was talking about.

On the other hand, maybe they’re wanting to have a wild and crazy party . . which is what we’re thinking about doing!  Vince is taking off Friday and we may celebrate having all the chickens in their coop.  Maybe we’ll drink a bottle of wine and stay up late . . maybe til 9 p.m. 🙂

Seriously, Texas is about as wild as I can handle.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. Now Judy, you make Texas sound like a horror movie from the 1950’s. Do you live near a nuclear plant?

  3. I’ve also heard ‘Keep Austin Weird’. Never having been to Texas I can’t comment but I know that Texans and Austinites in particular love their city and state!

  4. Oh Judy, if you want to see a big bug, you have to see what we have in the Phoenix area in the summer, usually first being seen about July 4th and gone by the end of August. It is the Palo Verde Beetle. They grow underground feeding on the roots of the Palo Verde trees and they resemble a cockroach. They are absolutely huge and they fly! Here is a link if you want to see how they compare to a quarter and a person’s hand: http://phoenix.about.com/od/deasertcreatures/ss/paloverdebeetle.htm

  5. You just know how to brighten anyone’s day.
    That is just too funny!!!

  6. Linda mentioned what I was going to say, I’d always heard the saying that things were bigger in TX but I suspected it was more an exaggeration based on the size of TX, but boy howdy, you’re proving the truth in that saying with your photos and stories. BTW, you can keep that beetle in TX, thank you.

  8. ROFLOL Ya Judy!! That is definitly my kinda party!! When we moved 4 or 5 yrs ago…I found a bottle of booze that I had bought to celebrate the Y2K new year…LOL apparently I went to bed before the new year that year also!!! hahahaha
    PS I threw it away…sorta figured if we hadn’t opened it in 5+or- years…we probably were not gonna !!! Still ROFLOL

  9. I don’t know what they were thinking. The grasshoppers around central Texas are as big as my fist!!

  10. i hear ya, Judy. when i was in Texas i was amazed at the huge bugs and outside creatures. perhaps you could catch a few and throw them in to the chickens.

  11. I agree…. we lived in Texas for over 12 years and now, after living in Colorado for 11 years, I can’ believe the huge bugs we lived with! It took me 2 years to accept that having an exterminator out at least 4 times a year to keep the roaches out of the house was not a reflection on my housekeeping! I still remember shortly after we moved there, I heard something in the family room and there was this huge flying roach snacking on the hard peppermints in the candy dish on the coffee table…. EEEEWWWW! That thing creeped me out!

  12. Ok entomologist here- ground beetle and is usually nocturnal. It eats other insects, sometimes snails and is attracted by light. Maybe you leave your outside light on at night. During the day they hide under rocks. a wider bodied variety eats earthworms (bad on him) and caterpillars.
    Leslie

  13. YIKES……never saw a beetle that big (or ANY bug that big, come to think of it). I guess with Delaware being a pretty tiny state, we only have room for tiny bugs!!!

  14. I lived in San Antonio for a few years almost 30 years ago. I never did get used to the creatures down there. I had a gecko in my house of which neighbors said they are fine as they eat the bugs. I would rather have had bugs! Rattlesnakes and water moccasins at the park scared me to death having had a toddler at the time. But the worst part was the heat and humidity! I am from Oregon and we don’t have that kind of weather at all. I was so glad to move back here and to this day cherish our relatively cool, dry summers.

  15. I must admit that after 30+ years in Texas, living in Ohio has provided me with a welcome surprise: a relative dearth of big bugs! We do have these weird ghostly bugs that creep me out. I don’t know yet what they are, and they move so fast I haven’t managed to take a picture of them. They give me the shivers but they don’t fly, and they don’t get caught in my long hair like those nasty giant roaches (palmetto bugs, really) we had in Texas! I’m so thankful for that. 😀

  16. My entomologist cousin (who lives in Austin, by the way) calls this a goliath beetle. And the reason I was asking him about it was because I found parts of one in my yard in North Alabama. Have no idea what tackled it and killed it, but it must not have been tasty!!

  17. OMG. That would send me over the edge. Yes, I would pack up and move on the spot. I love snakes and lizards, and even bats, but no, flying beetles does it for me. The worst must have been all the June bugs when I grew up, we had SWARMS of them, and they hit the windows all night long ( no AC) and to this day, that noise gives me the creeps. That beetle would put me in therapy! Glad you love Texas, I’m staying on the other side of the country…besides that, you do have a great spot, Judy!

  18. Gotta have big bugs to feed those big lizards!

    Just to play devil’s advocate: they didn’t say make Texas wildER, just keep it wild. (Perhaps an answer to Keep Austin Wierd).

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