20 June 2006

6/19/06 - Lecompte

Travis and I drove up to Lecompte again last night, not heeding the voice inside my head that was telling me that it: has rained, will rain or was currently raining along the entire stretch of I49 that we were interested in.
I left Broussard at about 9:15 after being egged on by Travis who said that we had "set an appointment" and that we should keep it. Not far down the road from my house the sky opened up. I almost turned back a few times but continued on. After a little while I drove back out of it and just had sprinkles the rest of the way to Travis's (not cupcake/muffin sprinkles, I know what your thinking). I did see lots of frogs in the road and did my best to avoid them.
We left Travis's and headed out of Sunset through more sprinkles (rain kind). Along the way up I49 we needed petrol and stopped at what we thought was "Sammy's". We found a single, female Ox beetle in the parking lot but that was all we caught, not counting the looks from the other gas pumpers and that one guy with the dog that was standing against the wall of the building. After acquiring the gas, we wanted to check the place for other specimens. We broke all the rules and went through to the "trucks only" area (drove right passed the sign), but were not rewarded for our bravery.
Further up the road we passed by the real "Sammy's", and although we did not stop, we cursed the first station as being a complete "Sammy's impostor". We finally made it to Lecompte with only about 15min before "lights out" (11:00 on week nights). We both found many female Ox beetles and almost simultaneously surprised each other by finding both a live, female tityus and a dead, male L. capreolus at almost the same time. Nothing at all in "the corral".
We drove around to BK where we found another female near the dumpsters and two others around back. We had finished with the Cheveron/BK area, so we decided to check out the new spot across 49 that had all it's lights on now (still under construction). On the way there the big lights turned off. I think one of the only things we saw when we got there was a grapevine beetle, which I turned over (tarsi down) and left, and a brown wood-boring beetle (who's taxonomy I really don't care to look up right now because I'm tired). Looks like it will be a nice spot though.
After that we drove through Lecompte to the other station, but the lights were not waiting to greet us. We did find another female Strategus in the darkness.
We pressed on to the next exit north of Lecompte (insert catchy name here) but I think we only found another female Strategus there. We then drove to the "whatever gas station"/dollar general spot where we had found some Strategus the time before. Didn't see anything except some "tabakki" (chewing tobacco that unfortunately resembles various species of coleoptera at times) and I think a black bottle cap (A1 specimen!).
That was about it. On the way back we hit "Sammy's" (the real one) but didn't find anything. I at that point declared it "a night" and we started the drive back south. We did get 12 female aloeus, one female tityus and one new phrase: "bug zombie".

Bug zombie \buhg*zohmbee
adj.
1. The state of complete exhaustion due to lack of sleep, reached at after a late night spent collecting insects.
2. By standard definition: any reanimated insect.


Not too bad for a terribly rainy week night with a half-moon.

Steven

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