I cannot believe that I actually took a picture of a beetle – this has to be a first, ever. My Pbase friends must have been having more of an effect on me than I realized ;-).

I saw several of these fairly large beetles walking around the sand, both at Mada’in Saleh and during our desert caravan adventure, where this one was spotted.

The image is pretty heavily cropped; I may have been brave enough to get closer than I normally would, but I didn’t necessarily want to see the whites of his eyes, either, so to speak.

FWIW my Internet connection has deteriorated significantly in the past few weeks, although the provider says it’s just fine. I don’t call going down for long periods of time several times in an evening “fine,” but it does affect not only work but also my ability to comment.