Yeah, I know - the only odd Japanese Beetle behavior any of us would want to see is dropping dead or flying off en masse. Sadly, this incident was neither of the above but it was puzzling.

On my way to work I was stopping off to squish a few (dozen) of the miserable buggers as I casually passed by some roses. Yes, I can now do this cheerfully with bare hands though I usually fold the petals around their rotten little carcasses first before they give that satisfying "pop". And yes, I also throw the dead bodies way out into the grass in case this increases the pheromones attracting the things, as if they could be more attracted than they already are to all those roses.

Anyway, I thought that JB behavior was limited to eating, flying, pooping and astonishingly frequent bouts of passion (probably one in four roses has little JB orgies in process). So I was surprised to find one cup-shaped rose with a few surviving petals and two JBs lying belly up in the middle. I didn't stop to see if they were actually dead, since I knew in a few seconds they would be most definitively dead anyway, but I was curious what happened to them.

Did they eat themselves to death (the rose demolition nearby would suggest this might be true, greedy little pigs)? Did some brave bird or predator try to eat them and discover they taste horrible (no visible bite marks that I could see). Did their biological clocks just suddenly go off? Is this some sort of odd post-passion pass-out - if so, I should be seeing this a lot more often (still, there WERE two of them in the same state)? Were they just resting belly up like the proverbial old uncle at Thanksgiving, prior to checking the rose fridge for leftovers? Was this sunstroke?

I know for sure this was not any insecticide or other products since I spray nothing on my garden or lawn and none of my neighbors do either. No one else in my family is stupid enough to be out in the garden in this kind of heat, so no one but me could have caused anything active to happen to them, at least as far as humans go. If I've magically discovered a rose that's poisonous to Japanese Beetles I'm going to totally buy out this rose and market it all over the world and make enough to ACTUALLY have as many roses as I want (never going to happen in reality otherwise). It was Acropolis, BTW, but I sadly don't think it's poisonous to them because it gets eaten with gusto and no JB carcasses are littered in the vicinity.

So what gives? Bug experts, this one's back to you!

Cynthia