Japanese Beetles raged on my raspberry bushes two years back.

F√ck Japanese Beetles.

No, really, like f 'em all the way to Sunday.
_{Hell, make it all days of the week for all I care.}

And there was sex. All. The. Time. Right out in the open: obvious bug fornication.

To be honest it looked mostly like spooning, one on the other's back - but also I'm no perv so didn't take a magnifying glass to understand how it all worked.

Killing one beetle wasn't going to do it, so in the fall I called in reinforcements: some beneficial nematodes.

I poured these microscopic roundworms right into the soil to feed on the Japanese Beetle larvae.

The way this works: nematodes sneak into the larvae through any opening (ewww), release fatal bacteria, and then reproduce inside the dead body. Then these new young nematodes disperse to kill the next larvae.

Which is totally creepy if you think about it: a baby eating a baby sort of thing.

Come spring, I found a beetle feeding on our dahlias and got properly medieval.

Drunk on flower petals and slow moving, the beetle was easy prey for my sharp garden shears.

Snip snip, one became two, like an illusion in a magician's performance.

Eventually, I got more efficient.

I bought Japanese Beetle traps by the dozen: plastic contraptions of two intersecting halves mounted on metal stakes, with a green hourglass-shaped plastic bag hanging off each one.

A beetle sex-pheromone lure is attached, and so all the horny beetles think they're gonna get some...beetle action...some hot lunch, a bit of the ol' afternoon delight.

And then - bam! - their tiny legs can't grip the plastic bag, and they slide tragically into the darkness below.

«|«|«|»|«|«|«|»|«|«|«|»|«|«|«|»|«|«|«|»|«|«|«|»|

But what have we here. Hundreds of my beetle friends are already at the bottom of this bag. We're crawling all over each other, a writhing mass of antennae, metallic green bodies and sloped coppery brown shells.

It's like a gigantic gyrating bug orgy, so you can understand my excitement: six legs and chewing mouthparts doing the lord's work.

As a beetle, I've never partaken in an orgy, but realize soon enough it's only fun for so long. No one seems content.

And you know what? It's hot and stuffy, this bag-I-can't-get-out-of is in a sunny patch.

There's no sleeping because every few minutes - plunk! - another beetle drops from above right onto my beetle head. The new arrivals seem excited at first. Of course they do. The smell said there would be something good here.

By morning there are hushed vibrations in all our beetle wings, passing word from one to another: We are trapped.

Everyone has tried up. Up doesn't work. There are tiny holes where air comes through, but never enough.

There are no plants to munch on. No food at all.

It's mayhem and sticky and smelly and scary. Everything is swaying, as if we are packed into a slow-moving railway car, carried to a destination unknown.

Beetles all around me are dying, and the living climb onto the dead, trying to get higher.

Suddenly the bag lurches and we're sinking into a pail of water.

Finally, water.

A great bath, a welcome cleansing. Relief from the heat and filth.

But then the water is above our prothoraxes, and it's full of soap, clogging breathing tubes and stiffening body parts.

The living are drowning, the dying are fortunate, and the sounds cease as we're all tossed into a garbage bin for Friday's pickup.