Brand New Bug

 In working on our goal of Zero Waste (we are soooo far from it) we do our own form of composting... we feed plant based "leftovers" to the wildlife.  Stuff like stems, peels, gone bad bits and so on.  

Himself puts it out in the evening and by morning it has disappeared.  We are used to seeing deer, racoon, possum, ground hog and other 'guests' strolling over to see what is at the buffet.

 Recently Himself came upon a new guest~

 

 He took our bug jar out to bring one back for me to ID. 

 

 I had never seen it before either. 

 

 A Google search revealed it was an American carrion beetle.   It lays its eggs in raw meat and fungi (maybe we had tossed out some mushroom bits).  So do flies.  As the fly eggs hatch into larvae, the beetles eat them.  So do the beetle larvae. 

 Pretty interesting!