I Could Not Have Said It Better

Too often others have said what I think, only better than I could. Witness: "They mostly sit around, flattened against the bottoms of leaves, grinning, looking all the world like bits of snot with general goo mixed in." When I saw these bugs, I thought of a transparent VW spangled up by a hippie or hippie-wannabe. (My own 1967 bug was yellow with bright multicolored daisy decals.)

Impressively, these tiny metallic Mottled Tortoise Beetles (Deloyala guttata) are only one of "roughly 1,400 [leaf beetle] species in North America" -- pests with a fancy name, proven by the pockmarked leaves in which this pair couched.

Oh, but they are seductive, too, as well as numerous and destructive, shining like hand-blown glass shot through with glittering flame.