I've seen people on the internet asking each other "where did all the christmas beetles go?" for several years now.
You'd have to have your head in the sand to not know that there's been a devastating loss in the insect population globally in general, but I suppose the seasonal event of christmas beetles assaulting every home after dusk was especially hard to ignore.
I tend to assume that most of the mass die-offs of insects is, even in urbanised areas, ultimately mostly the result of agricultural activity.
But a couple of weeks ago, christmas beetles climbed out of the ground in my backyard. It was pretty cool.
I'd never bothered to learn about christmas beetles. What their lifecycle is etc. But I had a suspicion- I've never heard my boomer dad talk about lawn grubs (and poisoning them) until a couple of years ago. After doing a quick search, sure enough christmas beetles in their larval stage are one of several species which collectively make up the group of "lawn grubs."
Even so, I don't know shit about "lawn grubs" - have they been a plague upon boomer lawns since time immemorial? Did we just hit an environmental (and pesticide) tipping point where they started to die out?
I still don't know. But maybe. I did some searches on google trends to see whether lawn grub killing was an ancient tradition with humans only recently winning the war. No. No it's really modern, if google search trends are a reasonable metric.
No interest in the phrase "lawn grub" in Australia until 2008.
The graph for the phrase "lawn grub killer"
and a graph for the phrase "lawn grub bunnings" (bunnings basically holds the monopoly on retail sales of house and garden / DIY supplies in Australia)
The second two graphs which show interest specifically in killing lawn grubs shows a distinct consistent increase in public interest starting around the end of 2017.
Despite lawn grubs being known by that name and searched for since at least 2008, searches for poisoning them only started about 8 years ago.
Why do people kill lawn grubs?
Because they damage lawns.
"Grub lawn damage looks like big, irregular dead patches of turf"
They deposit their eggs into garden soil and when those eggs hatch into a larvae (the lawn grub) the larvae eat the roots of the growing grass. Once they reach maturity they tunnel out of the ground and fly around looking to fuck and to find pale faced people to dive-bomb.
Not only are they cool as fuck, but they also kill the lawn. Both good things.
Don't let your boomers poison christmas beetles just to preserve an ornamental lawn that requires constant maintenance and resources.
The common poisons used on them are marketed as an "organic pesticide" and explicitly as "not a scheduled poison" - no shit it's not scheduled, if it were you'd need a license to buy it and regulations would cover how you use it, it's a marketing non-sequitur. It's poison and they're killing far more than grubs.
Shame them. Appeal to their nostalgia and Australian spirit. Whatever. I miss christmas beetles. Who wouldn't want glorious native scarab beetles to thrive?
I would bet a lot of money (if I had any) that lawn grubs rarely cause issues even for lawn-lovers except in rare circumstance, and that boomers have been psyopped to fear the humble christmas beetle larvae so they will spend money on chemicals to give their fuckin grass patch prophylactic treatments just in case.
Look at this bullshit. It's from the material safety data sheet for one of these so-called "organic pesticides":
Notice that they do not actually disclose the chemicals in the product. Fuck anyone that uses it but we're just to accept that "it's a special blend of safe ingredients". Fuck this pathetic country I stg.
An older MSDS for the same product suggests that:
Swallowing large quantities may cause nausea, headaches, irregular heartbeat, cramps and breathing difficulties
and even the most recent MSDS lists
So fucken dodgy. Regulatory bodies in Aus have been getting a lot more lax recently. Still plenty of energy to regulate the private citizens though. /cooker
The irony is that if you don't poison them for a few years, their natural predator, a parasitic wasp that uses a long ovipositor to lay eggs in the grubs while they're still underground, thins them out enough that they probably barely harm the lawn.
The "gardening" industry is full of products designed to fuck up your environments natural regulation. This is good for these companies, because it means your environment (your garden, lawn whatever) now requires you to buy these products every few months because now it's regulation depends on them.
It's ridiculous. Especially in my dad's case like, old man, your "lawn" isn't that impressive anyway and I know you don't actually care, so why are you doing this. Haven't seen many wasps around either now that you mention them. Shit's sad.
I was reading the unabomber's manifesto earlier for unrelated reasons. Lawn related fuckery and the sociodynamics around it are peak Surrogate Activities.
Yeah it's a feedback loop type thing, if there are no beetles for the wasps to lay eggs on, the wasps themselves leave.