I respect your (your, as in everyone here) right to have an opinion but I disagree with it. I feel that such a high number of beetles does indicate that the company has a cleanliness problem. That is the conclusion I came to and I still feel the same way. My opinion is based on the research I did on the beetles once I found out what they were. I still think my conclusion is a logical one but I respect your right to disagree with me. This species of beetle eats dead animals, therefor, if there are as many of them as there are crickets in a facility, you can logically assume a company isn't cleaning out the bins as often as they should be. You may disagree with that, and that's okay. We reached different conclusions. The people reading the thread will each come to their own conclusions.
I call the beetles flesh eating beetles because many of the sites I came across called them that and I didn't want to misspell their scientific name while typing quickly. It was easier to type "flesh eating". I didn't call them that to make them sound more scary, I assumed it was the common name most people knew them by. They are in the same family as carpet beetles, so just as some say "carpet beetle" to describe certain species, some say "flesh eating beetle" to describe others. Why they are called "flesh eating" and not "protein eating", "carcass eating", etc...is anyone's guess. I just went by what I kept seeing them referred to as. I saw them called "hide beetles" a couple of times as well.
The reason I say they are a pest species and it is wrong for a supplier to haphazardly ship them out is because they can get loose and eat many things in your house, like leather coats/furniture, wool, valuable paintings that were painted on skins, antiques of certain kinds like taxidermy items, fur coats, etc.... the list goes on and on. They could cause a person incredible financial losses. So to those who would blow this issue off and belittle someone who thinks it is a big deal, what would you say if they were shipped to someone who didn't know what they were and they got loose and destroyed a national treasure or a prized family heirloom? If the person affected got royally upset about it, would you treat them like they were overreacting? It's all a matter of perspective. What to you may be not a big deal could be devastating to someone else.
I did a decent estimation of the cricket numbers, similar to your block method. It isn't that hard to count out a hundred and then make scoops that look about the same amount. What I received was about a third of my order, and most of those were dead. Crickets aren't cheap when you order three thousand, so yeah, it's a bit annoying to not get what you paid for. I realize some of the crickets may have been eaten by the larvae but it was shipped overnight, I doubt they ate two thousand crickets. Then again, I could be wrong about that, they do eat carcasses pretty quickly, so maybe they did eat that many in one night.
I realize some of you think I overreacted and you have the right to think anything you want. I don't feel that I did. I have antiques and valuables in my house that these pests can eat and I am very angry that they were shipped to me. I feel a supplier should be more careful than Flukers was. I feel that they did not take the issue seriously enough and that further angered me. Your reaction may not have been what mine was, some of you may have even wanted to get so many beetles so you could start a colony of flesh eaters because you like to clean skeletons for displays. That's okay, we can disagree about whether these beetles are good or bad to have around the house, but please try to see someone Else's perspective and not think yours is the only one with merit. Someone with an antique leather couch worth about ten grand might not feel the same way you do and what you see as an overreaction may not be one if you look at it from that perspective.
BTW, I posted about this at two sites, here and arachnoboards. Obviously some of the people responding in this thread are the same people posting in the other thread. If you want to insinuate that I am running all over the net trashing Fluker, go right ahead. Most likely though, your efforts will just make people wonder why you have a chip on your shoulder and why you care. Perhaps you're just in need of a target to vent your hostilities on. I have no idea, but knock yourself out.
