For the earth, long-winded, rests its ear upon a mud-caked paw, listening for the start of the next one, the end of this: the thawing of life in its tomb. Every four years, the German soil gives up its life to the emergence of the Coleoptera Scarabaeidae, their fleshy larvae awakening from quaternary gestation as winged beetles come of age with the month of May. As such, they are known as the Maikäfer, the Maybug. Sure as the four seasons in the quartering of time and distant relative to the Egyptian scarab of reincarnation, the Maikäfer is strangely emblematic of the emergence of May-fairness, the rarity of spring.