I woke up in the middle of the night last night with a bug on my face. I squished it and stuck it on the night stand for identification in the morning. (That all sounds very calm—I then proceeded to twitch for the next few hours as I was sure that every little itch was more bugs crawling all over me.)

Today it was a good excuse to get out the cheap macro lens extender I have for my camera and take some closeups to see what the tiny bug looked like (that’s a penny in most of the shots, for scale, and that texture is because it’s on a paper towel). The cheapness of the extender means I have no aperture control and hence a very narrow depth of field. But I can see pretty clearly its six legs, long curly antennas, and smooth rounded back.

It’s not a bed bug, thank goodness—I had, even last night in my sleep been pretty sure it wasn’t a parasite because it popped pretty easy—in my experience, bed bugs, ticks, and fleas are all pretty hardy and it takes quite a bit of pressure to pop them. I was wondering if it was a flea, but the long, curled under antennas would seem to rule that out. If it’s not either of those, I’m not too worried—just a random tiny bug. But I figure I’ll stick some of these photos here, in case some entomologist wanders by and wants to give a shot at an identification.

(I’ve put the photos after the jump, in case anyone gets heebied out by insect closeups. Conversely there more photos in a set on Flickr, if you think they’re cool.)

Update: Thanks to Steve and his father-in-law and his colleague, in the comments, it was almost certainly a Spider Beetle. Thanks everyone! #science!