On the way home from work I spotted a log section that had been dumped in a clearing 30 yards or so from the road in a powerline right-of-way. I stopped to check it out, thinking I would peel the bark looking for larvae. The log had been a living tree too recently to peel, but it had been split open to reveal a pocket of rot in the middle. This proved to be home to a dozen or so cl*ick larvae and about three dozen large scarab grubs that reminded me of first-year Osmo*derma scab*ra larvae because of their size and translucency. Not knowing what might next become of the log, I gathered the larvae and am in the process of rearing them.

Unlike many other beetle larvae, these seem not to mind each other's company. In fact, they tend to cluster together. They readily eat dried puppy chow, which I have to remove and replace every two or three days since it gets moldy rapidly. I keep them in a plastic parts sorter cubicle on a bed of frass/rot from my Osmoder*ma rearing container. Several of the grubs have shed their skins -- an indication of growth I'm guessing.

Just think, if you lived in a hunter-gatherer society, a find of grubs like this would mean good eating, either raw or cooked :-)

(Periodically I am called upon to explain my practice of inserting asterisks into insect names. It's my way of throwing off the bugguide search engine so it won't show the image in search results for an insect that is not in the photo whenever anyone searches using that name.)