Some discoveries only come after an arduous journey of many miles; others require less distance... but maybe no less effort. This is one of the latter. To find and document this handsome beetle, which features an eye-catching red field-mark where the wing-covers meet the thorax—OK, technically, where the elytra meet the pronotum—I only needed to walk out the basement door tonight and scan the cedar shingles under the flood lights. The half-inch long dark beetle not only was waiting for me, but it also waited patiently while I raced back inside for my camera and lights. That was the easy part. Then came the effort: trying to come up with an ID. That took the better part of an hour, and a long, slow, patient slog through Arthur Evans's Beetles of Eastern North America and lots of corroboration from BugGuide. The verdict? Penthe obliquata, a member of the Polypore Fungus Beetles that belong to the family Tetratomidae.