Their summer flights of fancy

No creature matches the comic aplomb of the June beetle. Any day now, it will appear in our gardens, its flight so unsteady that it will make a bumblebee look like a Harrier jet. Yet somehow it will be aloft. Then, bap! It will head straight into a fence and tumble to the ground. As we debate whether to deliver the coup de grâce, it will collect itself, take flight and proceed with doughty conviction in the general direction of a fig tree.

By Emily Green

June 30, 2005