Location

This was in SPRING 1975, in the hamlet of Blodgett Oregon, just South of Highway 20. I had bought a small wooden house built in 1948 when the beetle eggs were likely planted on my logged wood, and I heard something chewing out of the window trim for a few weeks---the whole house was made of locally harvested and milled Douglas Fir "old growth." There was a busy lumber mill and drying kiln there back then. One day I noticed an oval hole about a quarter-inch long in the surface of my window trim, with a beautiful iridescent green dead beetle below it on the floor. It had chewed through the surface lead paint and died as soon as it got out to the light, after a twenty-seven year voyage in the dark. That Summer I hiked often in the woods and on sunny days saw green beetles landing on the cut ends of a stack of felled Douglas Fir second growth logs in the same area, about a quarter mile South of Highway 20 and Blodgett. I also had to cut my wooden siding boards shorter to resist ant and termite explorations, cutting off about an inch and a quarter of length. I revealed many large and angry big-headed white grubs trying to get out of their burrows, and they were oval shaped too. I presume they were kin of the dead beetle on my floor? There were only a few Ash trees in Blodgett, planted along the old highway "Main Street" of Blodget. I have not been back there for forty years. My point is to mention the iridescent green beetles thriving on Douglas Fir there since the 1940's at least. I LOVE the fragrant Ash trees in Portland! Thank you for your work trying to save them! L Todd Sullivan 7/2/25