As all good Bible scholars know "there is a time and a season for all things".

Here and now it is big beetle season. I come across them lumbering over the floor or quite frequently lying on their backs waving their many legs piteously in a dance of death.

I spotted one in action yesterday climbing up the outside wall and snapped it. I happened to have a wineglass handy and put it in shot to give you an idea of the creature's size.

I sat back in my chair and watched it climb. Some stretches it attacked vertically, elsewhere it traversed to find a better route. It coped with over-hangs and jagged outcrops until, when about 5 metres up it opened its carapace and flew whirringly and noisily down to the grass 20 metres away.

Two questions arose in my mind. If it can fly why did it bother climbing up? If it wanted to get to that spot in the grass why didn't it just walk? It's got enough legs after all.

I think the answers may be that it hasn't the power to take off from the ground so it's really a glider rather than a flyer and secondly that walking can be dangerous, especially in my garden where there are snakes about. (They haven't all been exterminated by the mower).