June Bug

June Bug. I'm curious. Why June Bug? Does it have anything to do with June, the month, or June, a woman? Or romance? So, I looked it up.

I found out that can be called May Beetle (South) or June Bug (North) so it must be a Spring insect. Scientific Name: Phyllophaga. Order: Coleoptera. Description: Adult beetles, commonly referred to as May beetles. They are ½ to 5/8 inches long, and reddish brown. White grubs are "C"-shaped larvae, up to 1 inch long, with cream-colored bodies and brown head capsules. They have three pairs of legs, one on each of the first three segments behind the head.

Three pairs of legs. Must be really stable like a three-legged stool? In my research I found a picture (quite ugly) of a beetle with a caption: USED BEETLES. When I looked, it was an ad for used VW bugs. I had one in 1956.

We now know they appear earlier in the South so they go by both names. Seems they can be spelled as one word or two. They appear in the Spring and can be a nuisance when adult bugs are attracted to light so you better duck.

They are hungry little things. Look: June Beetles are pleasing to the eye, with remarkable shades of metallic green on their elytra and underparts. Despite this pleasing appearance, they are no friends of farmers in the eastern U.S. where adult June Beetles often dine on corn, peaches, and grapes . . . Even greater damage is caused by June Beetle larvae, which live in the soil and wreak havoc with the root systems of row crops, lawn grasses, and ornamental plants.

OK. I thought they were ugly but the writer above said they were pleasing (cute?). To each his own. But I am still looking for a more romantic reason why June Bugs are, well, let's say, so well known.

So, I went looking. I found this on a website. Junebug was a R-rated movie (2005) where a big-city art dealer goes with her new husband to meet her parents which created problems. So much for romance. I also discovered that Junebug is used as the name for various entrepreneurs such as weddings, movie reviews, photography and DVD rentals.

Sorry, folks. June Bug elicited 740,000 responses on Google but I wasn't romantic enough to search through all of them.