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wenzili
05-25-2007, 08:57 PM
2) Bullfighting without Matador

Except for cicada, a special insect known as Long-Horned Beetle was also very popular to us.
In our local dialect, we divided them as four types:
The first one is “cow”, since children in our hometown considered it looked like farming cow.
The adult “cow” is about one and half inches long. Its body is covered by fine and dark brown hair. It has a funny looking head where there are two long gnarled antennae, and a pair of huge dark eye rims. Without eyeball, the eye rims look like wearing a blinder. Closed to the eyes, there are two pieces of inward bending tusks.
Our buddies called the antennae as horns. However, I was always doubtful, since no any cow had such long horns. In my opinion, they looked more like the feather decoration on the warrior’s head in Peking Opera. Even though, I still followed them and called the beetle as “cow”.
“Cow” is a pugnacious creature. It always gestured as a fighting bull by lowering its long horned head. Its sharp tusks also seem to be ready to snap anything.
We liked it but in the mean time scared it too.
Our most popular activity was to have a “bullfight” competition. In “bullring”, their serious looking and fierce fighting always made us laugh to tears.
The second type is known as “buffalo”, which frequently inhabits in the top of a willow and accompanies by cicada.
Its shape and size are similar to “cow”, but has no hair. Its color is shining black with dozen white spots on the elytra, which looks like being sprinkled by white paint.
Comparing to the “cow”, “buffalo” is much tardier and easier to catch.
Sometimes, we managed to reach the top of a tree and picked them up by bare hand.
Once we got some, for safety reason, we had to hold their antennae and tie their necks with threads.
Dislike the “cow”, they seldom fight to each other. Only could we get fun by driving them to fly or taking the herd of them in a portable willow twig.
The third type of the beetles is so-called “calf”.
Calf’s shape is similar to the “buffalo” but much smaller, with a length about 19 centimeters.
Calves always gather on the back of ramie leaves.
Comparing to others, to get them was just a cup of tea. Since the size was too small, we had no way to tie them up and had to put all of them together into an empty inkbottle. Fed a piece of the ramie leaf, they might survive a couple of days.
The fourth one is “red bull”. Its shape looks like the “buffalo” too, except for its red neck, just like wearing a red scarf.
Besides, it has a strong and terrible smell, which makes people sick. Therefore, no one dare to touch it.
Usually, it can be found in peach twig.
Without natural enemy, it always has its good time to enjoy itself among the luscious fruits.

Note: For picture reference pls. Link to:

http://www.quanjing.com/Creative/frameset.aspx?q=0|1|%u5929牛科||20|0|2|
http://freebsd.tspes.tpc.edu.tw/~afu/770.htm#細天牛族

wenzili
05-25-2007, 09:04 PM
3) Mercy to the Rose Chafers

Rose chafer or cockchafer is a charming insect with matallic shining colors. Its tiny head is completely out of proportion to its clumsy body. For unknown reason, the chafer always spreads its funny looking antennae out before it takes off.
In my childhood, Rose chafers were one of our most favorite insects. We enjoyed their lustrous crusts. Under sunlight, the colors were changeable and always gave us tremendous mystery and imagination.
As per our own definition, we classified the cockchafers into three types:
“Fire Gold” was defined as those with golden purple on its shining green base. Its body was much thicker and more round than others. Regardless of its lovely clumsiness, it is the most diligent beetle. With loud buzzing sound, it kept flying all the time, even when captured or tied. Therefore, this sort of chafer was very attractive to us.
The Chafer in pure dark-green is known as “Green Jade”. “Green Jade” is slightly slimmer than “Fire Gold”. Actually, it is the real beauty among all sorts of chafers with gentle but lazy nature.
“Green Jades” always annoyed us by ignoring any take-off command and made us awkwardly gave up the fighting competition. Some of us might flight into a rage and became sadism for losing faces. They either exposed them under hot glaring sunshine or fiercely spanned them by grasping the far end of their tied threads. The most sever punishment to them was to nip their toes hardly. After such heavy penalties, they might unwillingly open their green elytra and took off reluctantly.
As a result, children would be amused greatly. They held the threads and followed their tracks cheerfully. Unfortunately, just a few feet away, the beetles stopped their flights again and piquantly swung into the air leaving behind their legs grasping the threads, there, the chafers snatched a moment of leisure and enjoyed themselves thoroughly.
The third chafer is known as “ Brown Jade”.
With the smallest size and dull brown without any metallic shining, it was often considered as rubbish with no enjoying value.
These three sorts of chafers were fancy to gather in the north slope of Dong Shan. Together with one or two wasps, they were hastily preparing picnic on the tree trunks.
“ Look, they are holding a birthday party!” someone shouted. “Shush!” the others hissed at him immediately.
In the meantime, one of us climbed up the tree quietly and managed to drive the wasps away, then, with a sudden flap, he captured all of them in his closed palms.
He threw the “Brown Jude” away and shared the remainders with us. We tied up their necks one by one with lengths of threads.
Usually, the little creatures often refused to eat after being captured. Therefore, after a few hours, they all looked deadly exhausted. This miserable condition immediate aroused our pity to them. We cut the threads shorter and, on the other end, tied some small pieces of paper with words such as “Freed by XXX”.
The little captives together with their tags were thrown into the air. Surprisingly, they were so smart that they just knew this was the very moment to escape. Contrary to the extremely sorry look a moment ago, they all instantly revived and directly flew to their nests as soon as possible. Shortly after a while, we could see nothing but some small pieces of paper fluttering in the sky……

Note: 1) This piece was checked by my friend Mr. Tang in HK. Notified it with my sincere thanks!
2) For more references, pls. log in my blog: http://wenzili.my.24en.com