What an exciting day... I just went down to the vegetable garden to check on the plants after the rainstorm. On passing the well, I found a hungry snake shlucking a huge earthworm down its gullet. Quite a normal scenario really. The only thing that worried me was that the snake had a huge part of its tail missing. Memories from aggressive snakes in Lebanon came back when it started to hiss at me. Amazing what snakes can do with huge earthworms in their mouth.
Past the snake I viewed the progress of my vegetables. All fine. It was when I was viewing the sweetcorn that I notices a huge great beast appear at a canter towards me. It was black, neolithic and angry looking. Its pincers were huge and reddy and not things you wanted to snuggle up to.
I shot off at full speed, past the engorged snake and half eaten worm to the kitchen to find the camera.
It obviously was not a camera extrovert and exhibitionist and wasn't happy with me snapping away. When it started charging at me, all 8cm of it I backed off and found my computer and Internet connection to identify it. Apparently it was a male stag beetle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucanus_cervus
