Скачать или смотреть Melolontha melolontha (Cockchafer Grub) found in compost

So I was digging out my compost bin and I came across 10's of big fat white grubs. I had no idea what they were but after some hunting around on Google I found out that they were the grubs of the Cockchafer beetle.

An interesting fact was that in 1320, for instance, cockchafers were brought to court in Avignon and sentenced to withdraw within three days onto a specially designated area, otherwise they would be outlawed. Subsequently since they failed to comply, they were collected and killed.

Those crazy French... I don't know it it was the adult beetles that were used but it has been reported that in some areas and times, cockchafers were even served as food. A 19th century recipe from France (yeah those French again) for cockchafer soup reads: "roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". And a German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. A cockchafer stew is referred to in W.G. Sebald's novel The Emigrants.

Slideshow of cockchafer grubs on Flickr
http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=...