Meet a beetle

Ah, spring, when a nature nerd’s fancy turns to whatever is found crawling on the inside door frame. This is a varied carpet beetle, Anthrenus verbasci. It is one itty-bitty member of the mighty beetle order, being a hair under 1/8″ long. It was devilishly tricky to shoot, with the macro feature and a 15x21mm triplet loup both in play.

I don’t have any carpets, but this cosmopolitan creature’s larvae feeds on most anything found indoors, including cereal, leather, silk, sweaty synthetics, and other dead bugs. (Menu source: NWF’s Field Guide to Insects & Spiders of North America by Arthur V. Evans.) It’s one of the Dermestidae, or skin beetle family. If your’s is crawling, get over it. The adults are usually found outside feeding on pollen, so this one must have have made a wrong turn or else was planning on egging my place.