Not everything I find on a nature walk is as sweet as baby ducks or butterflies. Some things are material for a Halloween horror movie. 

This is a dead baby rat of some kind, being attended by an interesting black and orange undertaker called a burying beetle.

As bad as it looks, the beetle is not guilty of anything. It didn’t kill the little rodent, and I am not sure what did. It didn’t eat its face off, either. They just find the remains. Burying beetles around here are pretty quick when it comes to finding dead things, and they provide a valuable service while simultaneously serving their own interests.

This beautiful insect with a grisly occupation is of the species Nicrophorus carolina, and she (at least I think it is a she due to its behavior) was doing what burying beetles do best - trying to make a nursery for her future young buy digging a hole beneath the dead rodent into which it could fall, whereupon her eggs, deposited on it, could be covered with dirt and interred in the soil long enough for the beetles eggs to hatch and the larvae to feed on the carcass. The bigger the carcass the better, because if a carcass is too small it might not last long enough for the beetle’s young to complete their growth into the adult stage.

The male normally stands guard while the female works, but I did not see him and wondered if the exposed location may have caused him to get nabbed by a bird. The beetle seemed flummoxed by the location- how could it bury the body when the carcass was on concrete? It seemed to be trying to drag the carcass over to the edge of the driveway into the grass, but it was a long distance. Perhaps it was merely attempting to get beneath the carcass. 

It’s persistent but exhausting efforts were what caught my attention, and would likely have caught the eye if a hungry bird, too.

I picked it up and put it, and the deceased rodent, in a more sheltered location, hoping the beetle would have the strength left to finish the job.  I may or may not ever use the reference photos obtained from this encounter, but who knows?.

This species is not that rare, but there is a similar burying beetle species, the American burying beetle, on the endangered species list.

But opportunities like this are opportunities to investigate further and learn something new. That’s better than just looking away and saying “Eew!”

—-Susan Walton