The distinguished stag beetle

If ever there was a character that represents old Peckham it has to be the stag beetle. A proper south London geezer, dressed up to the nines in a sharp, shiny suit tinged with purple, brandishing a fine set of red antlers held aloft with pride and demanding respect as Britain’s largest beetle. With an ancestry going back to when the Great North Wood covered the area, he favours the old haunts in Peckham – those dusty, rotting log piles hidden at the end of gardens owned by people who have lived here for years and understand how the neighbourhood works. The trend for tidy gardens with paving, minimal planting and a complete lack of soul which are currently monopolising our streets are utterly useless to him. The stag beetle needs the perfect nursery – piles of old logs where their grubs can chew rotten wood to their hearts content and grow fat without being disturbed for the next few years until they are ready to morph into adults.

Like any dandy the stag beetle is almost hopelessly unfit to do anything other than hang around looking cool. Cumbersome in flight they look faintly ridiculous flying around, antlers waving, on a warm spring dusky evening, trying their absolute best to find a lady to flirt with. On a night out with the boys they can get into fights where a test of strength with their antlers will win the day. Unfortunately all that bravado can’t stave off fatal attacks by wide-boy corvids, hipster cats or under the feet of humans who have no respect for anything other than themselves.