The Sunday before Halloween, Geoff and I carved a pumpkin. I haven’t carved a pumpkin in about ten years. We carved a basic Jack-o-Lantern face, with gap teeth and turned down eyebrows. I didn’t want the deer that roam the neighborhood to mess it up so I kept it inside until Saturday morning, when I went to put it outside the house. And here’s what I found…
![](/blog/images/2009/grosspumpkin1.jpg)
![](/blog/images/2009/grosspumpkin2.jpg)
The whole pumpkin was full of this cotton-like white mold. I tried to clean it out and the pumpkin’s forehead started to buckle. Ended up tossing the whole thing and we didn’t have any Halloween decorations for the trick-or-treaters. (Which turned out to be fine, since only one group of trick-or-treaters came all night. Oh well. More candy for me!)
Then, yesterday morning, Geoff found this swimming the breaststroke in the pool…
![](/blog/images/2009/personbug.jpg)
The picture doesn’t do justice to this insect’s massive size. It was almost three inches long. That’s as big as a hamster! We saw another bug like this a few weeks ago after the heavy rain. That one was on its back, writhing around on the ground in its death throes, and I swear to god it looked like a little alien baby. Anyone know what it is?
I’ve seen those before, usually while digging. We turned up about 4 of them helping a friend build a retaining wall a couple of months ago. No idea what they are, though.
It could be a Jerusalem Cricket
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/redmite5.htm
Wow… yes, I think that’s it!