We had an old apple tree stump in the yard that was dug out and filled in. The skunks have been digging in the soft dirt for months. I set the kids to digging to see what was down there. They found it. A nice big fat grub. Half an hour later, 64 in the pile. Here is part of them. We believe they are cicadas, so we put them back down where they came from. The had sharp pinchers that grabbed the gloves.
Wow, Jon. You know, you couldda sauteed those little buggers. Minus the dirt. Couple of beers to go with................ Prolly a delicacy ......somewhere.
Found a similar cache several years back when doing a huge ash tree removal. There were at least a hundred, they were around two inches long and looked real similar to those that you found..
My chickens used to love those. I'd find them in some of the logs I was cutting and don't know what they were but they looked a lot like that. Anytime I'd find some ants while splitting I'd show them to the chickens and step back for a smoke while they cleaned them up. Made for nice orange tasty egg yolks.
Timely post, found my dog obsessed with eating something - when I made him drop it, it was one of those things. Big buggers!
Our chickens go crazy over those things. Besides moles liking them, I think they're at the top of the skunk menu. Our neighbor's yella lab digs a lot of holes and looks like she is foraging for something, I figure it's grubs as well.