Last night, we kept the arboretum open till 9PM, for "Creatures of the Night". There was supposed to be a lady giving a presentation with several live nocturnal animals, but she had car trouble and didn't show up until right before we closed. But we still had a bunch of people show up, so we handed out flashlights, gave them a list of possible things to look out for and just let 'em go! From what I could tell, they seemed to have a good time.

I set up my pitiful little black light and my sheet, and was relieved to see a nice variety of little beetles and bugs came to visit when it got all the way dark. The kids really enjoyed this, and at some point, we started putting a few things in a jar so they could pass it around and look at what they had picked off the sheet. There was one really cool looking long-horned beetle that I wanted to save, so at the end of the evening, I brought the jar home.


This is the beetle.

He was maybe a tad under 1 inch long, not counting the antennae. I didn't see his kind listed in my Insects of the Los Angeles Basin book, or on Peter Bryant's site. I will submit him to BugGuide.