I have no way to give you the scale of this thing as it was way up on the side of the house, but put your thumbs together and look all the way down to where they meet the heel of your hand. That's about how big it was, give or take a bit of variation in our thumb sizes.
Anyway, it was big, and at first I thought it was a giant cockroach, and I further thought it was seeking a way into the house where it would squirt its giant cockroach eggs all over the counters in a fine mist and then we really would be screwed, screwed! screwed, I say; and between the coming giant cockroach infestation and the swine flu we might as well just die of fright right now and get it over with.
Then I took a picture, in part to show you and in part so I could zoom in and get a better look, and I can tell you I've never been so relieved to see a set of mandibles. For that meant it was a beetle. A big, freaky, unpleasant-looking beetle, it's true, but also a sort of curious and remarkable beetle, not some terrifying mutant harbinger of the roach apocalypse.