beetle breakfast

this morning was nice enough weather for me to sit outside for breakfast. as i munched on my toast (peanut butter and jam), i spotted an iridescent beetle in a nearby shrub. it didn't seem to be too active - more collapsed on the leaf than perched. halfway through my banana, and i manuevered the beetle onto my plate; it was extremely sluggish and sank to its knees in a piece of orange peel (didn't know beetles have knees? well they have at least two pairs!). i decided, in a fit of generousity, to share my banana with it; it was probably the most productive thing i've done today. i enjoyed about two minutes of watching it devour an infinitesimally small amount of banana before it started 'swallowing' repeatedly (okay, so it's hard to tell exactly what a beetle's doing, but it looked like swallowing, or at least nodding its tiny head. it could have been slow-mo moshing, but there was no music.) after a minute or so of this, it woke up! in three seconds it scrabbled out of the orange peel, paused dramatically on the edge of the plate, fired up its wings and, like a minature botanical harley-davidson, buzzed off into the morning sky.