Merry Beetle

"Australia... you gotta stop"

That wording... I'm now personally convinced the Australian board of tourism has a secret branch that focuses on genetic engineering new types of animal horror.

@joshupetersen you know too much

@joshupetersen
I was going to say that the Australian Tourism industry might put a price on Humon's head.

She's certainly talked ME out of visiting (with this and several other comics).

An Oz bug that doesn't bite? I didn't know such thing would exist...

An insect that does NOT bite, sting or spit venom?
For Australians, that must indeed sound like a christmas wish come true.

@minando I've been bitten by one, but it doesn't really hurt all that much. Enough that you can tell what it's trying to do, but it can't get through the skin and doesn't inject anything, so it doesn't linger afterwards.

Christmas beetles are gorgeous ^^ they're also rather smooth and pretty friendly generally speaking. Not too good at flying ^^; ... they kind of bumble around like they're drunk xD ..at least the ones i saw did that. They may actually have been drunk though >>;

@firedemonofthesun Reading that help could not help reminding of June bugs: The insect too stupid to live. The only thing more pathetic than watching a June bug "fly" is watching one land or even just WALK, because both are attempted on their backs as often as not. Wikipedia compares the Christmas beetles clumsy locomotion to the European cockchafer, but Wikipedias photos of each differ notably: The similarity is striking between its photos of the Christmas beetle and June bug (its article on which is actually titled, confusingly enough, "European chafer," since June bugs are also a European beetle, invasive to North America.) Note, btw, that, while all three beetles area members of family Scarabaeidae, each is from a different genus.

Christmas beetle: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Christmas_Beetle.jpg/330px-Christmas_Beetle.jpg
June bug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rhizotrogus_majalis1.jpg

@JOL I saw similar insects when I lived in the UK, only they were called Maybugs. They could fly fine; they just couldn't steer XD Easiest way to catch them and get them out of the house was to follow them around with a container underneath them, wait until they crashed into the nearest wall and fell in. Job done XD

I was expecting ash.

@PurpleLibraryGuy I was expecting it to be spider webs falling from the sky

@MadlockFreak Spider webs and ashes are more of summer long event. So it's not a good Christmas symbol because it is too common.

For some reason, the ad on the top of the page says it was paid for "by the trump make america great again committee" and I'm... a little confused. Humon, are you ok with that?

@Bamawing
Mine just want to sell me houses o.o

@Bamawing The Ads are served by Google, and the site host may or may not have any control, there.

Edit: For example, I was getting ads for a vacation resort in washington, Upon making this comment, they switched to ads for Hosting Solutions, presumably because it twigged onto the 'Host' Keyword, there.

@Bamawing it's a targeted add, she has little power over what ads are shown, the ads that are displayed are based on your own browser history and cookies ect, in this case it's either displayed because you've been looking up trump, or because you're in america. So if you don't want to see trump ads, either avoid political sites, use a vpn to hide your location or tell your country to stop voting for idiots lol

Welcome to Australia, nature's End Boss Level.

With all this talk of ash I am reminded of getting caught in the ash-fall when Mount Saint Helens erupted in May 1980. It was the weirdest thing. I was outside chopping wood when big black clouds started rolling over and it looked like it was going to rain. Except the "rain" wasn't wet! Scared us silly. It sorta looked like snow coming down, but there was lightning too. And it was pitch-black-dark at 10:00 in the morning.

We also get forest fires here and the ash from them is annoying, but not particularly frightening unless you live close to the fire.

@Tarmaque Southern Californian here. Can confirm the "WTF?" from realizing the "rain" wasn't wet was scary as hell. And the darkness at early-as-hell-o'-clock. And the fact that flaming cinders raining from the sky are scary as hell also.

The only thing I haven't experienced is lightning when fires were going nuts. It's always been, you know, fires. Going nuts. Even at night. Making the sky turn orange at 11pm.

Australia gets my hugs. Long distant, democratic hugs.

@lunayoshi Volcanic ash is a different kind of creepy from wildfire ash. Not that I recommend either. ;

If an animal doesn't bite or have some weird poison or disease, is it really Australian?

I'm with England on this one. WTF?!