This is as close as I get to the mountain pine beetle in my work. The pine beetle is the famous one, it killed pine on over 18.2 million hectares in British Columbia, including just about every last one in my study area. I study its cousin, the Douglas-fir beetle, but the forests I work in are a mix of Douglas-fir and pine. That means when I'm the first one down a road in the spring, I get to deal with the mess of dead pine that blew down during the winter.