As part of the Great Kitchen Cleaning, I was charged with replacing a missing foot on the banana gallows we received as a gift many years ago. I found a tiny hole in the bottom that we’d never noticed before, most likely because we mistook it for an ink dot or an imperfection in the wood.
The spot seemed to have something inside and a pass under the microscope showed the remains of a pupal case. I pried it out, destroying it in the process. The insect was, of course, long gone.
Those are millimeter ticks on the scale along the top edge, so the hole is the better part of 1.5 mm in diameter. Perfectly round, of course, as only an insect programmed to drill holes can produce.
The hole was 8 mm deep (likely deeper before the wood was planed), so the bug was qualified for gun drilling!
The stand is marked “Made in Thailand”, but who knows where the wood came from or where it’s been? We’ve had the stand for many years now, but I’m pretty sure the critter was in there when we got it.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
2 responses to “Pupa from Thailand”
Looks like a drilled hole! 73 Raj vu2zap
I’m always bemused by the carpenter bees that drill perfect 5 mm (more or less) holes in the planks we leave out for them: perfectly straight, perpendicular, and well-finished. Just like using a drill, only with less splintering!
And then the smaller solitary bees fill the holes in an old chunk of butcher-block flooring we found in the basement. It had evidently been used as a wiring harness loom and had a zillion little holes drilled in it to align the cabling. The bees think those holes are just about perfect for eggs and pack them with mud every year.
Never a dull moment around here…