At the NTP, we came out for a chai break to find it POURING with rain. (The monsoon always waits for the official announcement in the newspapers, that it is a failure, before unleashing its fury on the city.) We found this

LONG-HORNED BEETLE

running around the porch, and Karthik used the opportunity to give us a 101 on the difference between beetles and bugs.

1. Beetles have eating-and-chewing mouth parts; bugs have sucking mouth parts.
2. Beetles have the outer set of wings hardened into a shell-like protective structure, almost an exo-skeleton; only the inner wings are used for flight.

Beetles, particularly the large ones, have very strong mandibles, and Karthik put a ballpen near the beetle…and it clung tenaciously to it, and held it, even though the pen weighed as much, if not more, than the beetle itself.

So here are the mandibles of this beetle:

You want to see how it rained?

And actually, a little scorpion was trying to make its way in the downpour:

This is the second scorpion sighting after the Arikere Reserve Forest; the wet apparently makes these creatures come out of hiding.

To get back to Long-horned Beetles…another one was being picked up, in the pouring rain, by a sodden

LONG-BILLED CROW:

So that’s the life…and death…of the Beetles…George, John, Paul, and Ringo…!