I resisted the urge to call him 'Pudge' too! LOL

I have never once been called Pudge before, not even by my dad who probably chose that name after a baseball game was on in the delivery room!! Something I always imagined would happen at some point in time, and here we are. Congrats, you're the first!! Hahha and thanks for the comment on the photograph.

He was one of my favorites. As for the beetles, wish we had some as striking as them here in Missouri. They're great.

There are very few colorful and vibrant guys like this around the mountains I go to, such as this guy. Maybe this summer, armed with a better camera, I'll spot some more interesting specimens.

I see in one of your other images (the one with the huge aggregation of this species) that you seem to be a little ways a way from deciding on colleges. Are you planning on going into entomology or some kind of science?

It's been my goal ever since the end of middle school, and I've been working hard to impress out-of-state colleges. But with the many things I've been exposed to in high school, I've found a serious love for music, philosophy, and now thanks to Project Noah first and then similar websites, an interest in nature has also taken hold of me. I will also consider a career where nature is my playground. As for the science and math, they've always interested me, so if I continue in the direction I'm going, being a chemical engineer will be a great possibility. What is entomology?

is the study of insects. There's a lot of us here :P I'm studying at Missouri.

While there's a strong love for entomology going on here, I know my heart is in fungi and therefore mycology. But of course I value such beings as insects, plants, mammals, etc, as they are all tied in to the creation of each other to some degree, i.e. plants create flowers which bugs may pollinate which turns into a seed that produces a tree that spores someday land near that form mycorrhizae with the tree and produce the fungus I'm so interested in. Being interrelated, I appreciate the whole of the process of nature.

Best of luck in your endeavors. I'm sure I'll see you around here again.

Thank you, and good luck in your efforts as well! I've got quite a bit more identified and unidentified creatures to share, but what I learn here I have to update on Project Noah and so this back-and-forth updating may take a while. Take care!