365 Days- Book I

68. Random Wikipedia Article

September 6, 2018

"Go to Wikipedia and click on Random Article. Write about whatever the page you get."

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Today was a conspiracy prompt, you wonder why, read the prompt again.

I tried it, three times; the first two times were of people whom I did not know and if I wrote anything, it would a re-write of the Wiki article.

And those who say 'three is a charm', wait a minute while I throw something out of the window (I cannot throw it at you, right, I am a good girl) and try to achieve a semblance of calm. So where were we...yes, three is a...

Anyway, the third try had Wiki also flummoxed. It returned a single line description on 'Anomala_ludoviciana', which apparently is a species of shining leaf chafer in the family of beetles known as Scarabaeidae.

Now you agree why this prompt is a conspiracy and not an inspiration? But wait a minute, this anaomal thingy, does it refer to beetles or scarabs?

Yes, Wiki confirms that scarabaeidae refers to a family of 30,000 species of beetles. And it does not include The Beatles, who were and I guess still are, a popular boy band group (some of their songs, I love, love, love...)

Scarabs or beetles remind me of fat buttons, with bright metallic colours and shiny stiff wings. They are quite useful little things and the dung beetle was worshipped in ancient Egypt. The female dung beetle lays the eggs in dung, which the male then rolls into a ball and pushes it for safekeeping. However, for the Egyptian observations, all they could see was a male beetle push a ball of dung, while stopping and dancing on it (which was the beetle's way of finding out where the sun in the horizon was so that it could get its bearings) and after a while, fully grown (in shape not in size) beetles emerged from the dung ball.

The roundness, the dance and the fact that beetles apparently emerged from a dung ball was sufficient for the Egyptians to associate the lowly beetle with Ra, the Sun God (Round, sets and rise, or emerges each day from the darkness...) and endow it with the name of Kheper (meaning becoming, emerging.) Kheper was also incorporated in the throne names of the kings on coronation. And the scarab beetle, rendered sacred, is also rendered as a motif in jewellery.

(There is a brilliant funny article on this, the link is given in the external link below)

Somehow the word beetle is also synonymous with fun and funky, remember the iconic Volkswagen car, bright yellow and small (it costs a mini fortune in India, though...).

There is also a game, it appears, by this name, which is a game of chance in which players attempt to complete a drawing of a beetle, different dice rolls allowing them to add the various body parts.

The most famous of the beetles, the ladybird or the ladybug (those distinctive red with black dots) immortalised in the nursery rhyme:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home

Your house is on fire and your children are gone

All except one, and that's Little Anne

For she has crept under the warming pan.

And here ends my essay(?) on beetles, there is a limit on what I can write.

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Word count 525