#checkered beetles

A very rude Red-Bellied Clerid who decided my face (and sunglasses) was a good place to land.

Yea my glasses are real fuckin dusty this was from my third day out on my camping trip.

^ I almost thought this was a member of the velvet ant family (mutillidae) until I got a better look and discovered it was, in fact, a beetle!! Specifically, this little guy is an orange-banded checkered beetle (Cleridae)!

Here's a couple velvet ants for comparison!:

Enoclerus eximius, a Checkered Beetle (Cleridae)

University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA 5/20/2013 Photo by Robert Niese