If lion is a king of beasts, then a stag beetle should be given the title of the king of the insects. Most of the Japanese boys love this insects so much that they dare to enter the deep forests where lots of mosqitoes await. Nowadays it's quite difficult to catch beetles in the city, though you can buy them at the department store. Every time I see them on sale in a small cage displayed on the corner of the pet shop, I feel sorry for them. I hate the idea of selling or buying the insects as many people do here in Japan. I believe we can't give any price to living things in nature and for this reason anything exists in nature is invaluable. I hope Japanese boys today will grow up with this important rule in their minds.
Here I will show you how to keep beetles (mainly stag beetles) and how to catch them and how to breed them as well.

July 20th,1997 9:34 on the morning of July 20th, a small percel arrived at my house. It had very precious things in it. The man who sent this was Mr. Shigeki Mori who lives in Tokushima. He is quite knowledgeable about stag beetles and auto-camping. I got acuainted with him through the internet some months ago. Since then we have been visiting each other's web site. My sons has wanted to see the MIYAMAKUWAGATA(DORCUS) for a long time. But in my disitrict there were very few MIYAMAKUWAGATA(Dorcus). As we exhanged our e-mails several times, he kindly offered his MIYAMAKUWAGATA to my sons. In addition he decided to give me two larvas of OKUWAGATA, too. We were anxious to wait for the parcel to arrive. We know it was sent on July 17th because we got an e-mail with that notice the day before. When the mailman came with that parcel on his bike, our hearts became almost thumping. It was very fine and hot on that day. I was worried that all of them were dead in the small box. Thank God! They arrived alive. Mr. Mori put the insects in the small tupperware with a lot of frakes of the tree, which prevented the heat from doing any harm to the insects. When we saw the horns of DORCUS(68mm in length) coming out of the frakes, we almost jumped for joy. Next summer we will go to Shikoku Island to see Mr. Mori. Then of course we will go stag beetle hunting together. You can see the bigger image of MIYAMAKUWAGATA (DORCUS) by clicking below. Dorcus１ Dorcus２ Dorcus３ We put the larvas of Dorcus in the small bottles as soon as we got them. The adult laid eggs at the end of June and they hatched soon and grew up to be larvas of second stage one month after. I felt myself hooked to the stag beetles when I made all these preparations with my sons. I won't be long before my house is full of stag beetles. I took a picture of my sons just after finishing the preparations. Their smiling faces proves how happy they feel.

In the back of my house, there is a small forests where Japanese common beetles live. The picture above is the first beetle we have got this year. It has just come out of a pupa. It's a bit small. We should have grown larvas in a better condition.

For these three days, (from July 22nd to 24th) my sons have got more than 20 beetles and one Dorcus. Someone threw away lots of watermelons near the edge of the forest, which made the perfect restaurants of the beetles. But we won't keep them for a long time, we will let them go in a week.

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