Master Gardener Darla Chouinard introduces us to the eerie wheel bug. Recently, a neighbor posted a picture of a big scary bug on social media inquiring what it was. I promptly identified it as an assassin bug or a wheel bug specifically an Arilus cristatus (Linnaeus). I am familiar with the wheel bug, as I found a dead one at my house not long before. There are about 160 species of assassin bugs in North America but the cristatus variety is found only in the United States. Even though these bugs are terrifying, they are beneficial to the farmer and gardener. Their diet includes “pest insects” including insect eggs, leafhoppers,…