Several years ago while walking in the ravine we saw an unusual-looking beetle on a tree, and strolled over to have a better look. We realized there were several of the beetles. They were unlike any beetles we could recall ever having seen before. We didn't know what they were, but they seemed not to mind our close presence and we soon realized why; they were busy copulating. Seems it was their season to breed.

We could get as close to them as we wished and they took no notice. So I took a few photographs of the beetles, and we were none the wiser as to what they were. They were round, fat little things and, we thought, quite attractive with their hard-shell iridescent-bronze bodies.

And then, a month or so ago we came across them again. This time we discovered a few of the beetles on one of our rose bushes. My husband carefully plucked them off the rose leafs, and took them over to the compost bin where all the kitchen and garden waste was nicely cooking away in the early summer warmth. They must have thought they'd died and gone to beetle-heaven.

This morning, as we were perambulating around the gardens as we so often do, there again, were several of the little beetles back on the rose bush; the same rose bush, as it happens. Again, my husband took care to do them no harm, and transferred these beetles to the compost bin. And it occurred to him that they might be Japanese beetles. So when we got back in the house I had a look on Google, and sure enough that's what they were.

Moreover, they're classified as pests, biological threats with an omnivorous appetite. They have a propensity to skeletonize foliage; nibbling on the green and leaving only the veins of the leaves. Which would effectively eventually, if enough of this grazing went on uninterrupted, kill whatever plant they were munching on.

So perhaps saving their bacon wasn't such a good idea, much less placing them in the compost bin where they could munch away to their black little hearts' content, and satiated, go on about breeding and exponentially multiplying. I now will have gruesome nightmares of our gardens festooned with millions of these avaricious little thugs, destroying all our hard work and pleasure in viewing what we've achieved with nature's help.

Sometimes 'nature's help' goes to the creatures that she designed to destroy, unfortunately.