Seeing a beetle
A beetle on your path belongs to the largest group of animals on Earth: about one in four described animal species is a beetle. With so much variety, the sight argues against lumping things together.
What it may mean
Scientists have named about 400,000 kinds of beetles, roughly a quarter of all described animal species, and they keep finding more. Ladybugs are beetles. So are fireflies, weevils, June bugs and the shiny green ones on the roses. Saying you saw a beetle is a little like saying you saw a plant: true, and nearly empty. Look closer and you find a ground beetle hunting slugs, a dung beetle recycling waste, a firefly signaling for a mate. A beetle on your path can be a nudge to notice where you have been lumping things together (a whole group of people, a type of work, a kind of day) and missing the variety inside. Folk traditions have read beetles as everything from rain-makers to death omens, often depending on the kind, so even the old beliefs split them up.
Depending on how you saw it
A June bug banging against the screen
On early-summer nights, heavy brown June beetles fly at lit windows and porch lights, thudding and buzzing. They are drawn to light and not very good at steering. What keeps drawing you back to the same bright spot, and does it ever let you in?
A shiny green beetle on the roses
Across the eastern half of the country, the metallic green-and-copper beetle on roses is the Japanese beetle, first found in New Jersey in 1916. Lovely to look at, hard on gardens. What newcomer in your life is both beautiful and costly?
Stepping over a beetle on the path
In England, it was held unlucky to kill a beetle, and plenty of walkers still step around one on the sidewalk without thinking. The pause takes a second. Which small, automatic kindness of yours goes unnoticed even by you?
A beetle indoors in winter
Some beetles, such as lady beetles and certain leaf beetles, shelter in houses for the winter and wander out on warm days. They are waiting, not invading. Who around you is simply waiting out a hard season under your roof?
Why it happens in nature
Beetles form the order Coleoptera, with about 400,000 described species, more than any other group of animals. Their hard front wings, called elytra, cover and shield the flying wings beneath. Many are drawn to lights at night, and some shelter indoors in winter.
What folk beliefs say
England
In England, it was considered unlucky to kill a beetle.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 581. View the page
Gloucestershire, England
In Gloucestershire, England, the rain-beetle was treated with superstitious care, since killing it was supposed to cause rain.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 581. View the page
Hungary (Magyars)
The Magyars considered the ticking of clock-beetles a terrible omen of death, sooner or later depending on how loud the ticking was.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 582. View the page
Ireland
In Ireland, beetles were disliked, especially a bronze kind called the gooldie, and seeing a beetle was thought to call up a rainstorm the next day.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 581. View the page
To reflect on
What have you been lumping together that would look very different if you looked at it one by one?