Goody or Baddy?

This was found walking across our carpet in the lounge!

Anyone know what it is. We would prefer to release alive if it's not a baddy.

 

They used to reign in the 60's

 

Thanks all. It seems to be the violet ground beetle (rain beetle) just on it's shape. I haven't been able to see it's violet bits

GOODY

 

No need to worry, @rosebay

If it had been a vine weevil, an oil beetle (deadly to bees nests) or a death watch beetle (not too uncommon in the old buildings around here) I would have given it a quick ending.
Otherwise it would have been put in a suitable situation in the garden.

Asking on here is usually a much quicker and surer way of identifying things (it would have taken me ages to search through the dozens of beetles on the internet). In the meantime, it had been put upright (it was upside down) and given a drop of water in the bottom of the glass.

As usual, our wonderful members had come up with the identification within half an hour and it was sent merrily on its way. I don't know how it got into the lounge but I guess it came in amongst some of the crops that I had harvested and then journeyed from the utility room and through the house. It wouldn't have found anything edible in the lounge and, as the lounge is beetle proof when the door is closed, may have died there.

I try not to kill anything in the house or garden if I can help it. Indoors we kill mosquitos (I'm allergic to them) and clothes moths (we had a serious infestation last year ). Everything else, ordinary moths, ants (picked up gently) and some spiders (others are left where they are - including the one that is sitting on the wall behind my computer and watching me at the moment, he's been there two weeks so far) as well as bees and wasps are all gently put/ushered into the garden.




We use no nasty chemicals in the garden (except for recommended bird friendly slug pellets as, otherwise, slugs devastate the crops that we grow for charity) and have a gold award from the Wildlife Trust.

When he was alive, even Oscar the cat was wildlife friendly. He protected all the birds in the garden, chased off the sparrow hawks, guarded from predators any babies that had fallen from nests, and the pheasant chicks used to play on and around him. The adults were all used to him and were never worried when he was around. They even moved into the garden because he kept the foxes out.