My favorite strategy for posting images is to go with the first sighting, but this shot of a stag beetle, a commoner among the roughly 30 species found in this country, is neither the debut nor the end game. I may have spotted the first member of the beetle family Lucanidae in June; I'll probably be seeing them through the rest of the summer. They're quite fond of my kitchen porch and basement lights, and they're very accommodating about posing for me, their seemingly ferocious jaws agape and ready to inflict nasty wounds on anyone venturing close. Actually, they're quite harmless and largely lack sufficient power to break human skin. The "antlers" are instead male features used to lock horns with rivals in wrestling matches aimed at establishing who's going to be mating with available females, whose smaller jaws can indeed deliver a painful nip. Still, I keep my distance... well, nine inches, the focus limit of my macro lens.