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In a small section of Kern County, outside the city of Bakersfield, a dirt ridge rises above the farmland. It’s home to a couple of cell towers, an orchard, and a creature that we didn’t know was there up until the last 25 years. In fact, it’s by chance that this animal is no longer flying under scientists’ radar. The first scientist to identify it was Greg Ballmer, a retired entomologist. In 1997, Ballmer was driving down Highway 99, just south of Bakersfield, “I noticed a small patch of sand along the highway,” says Ballmer. “And I got off the highway, went back and checked just to see what kind of insects might be there.” On that patch of sand, he found a bug that he didn’t expect to be there. “I was only here for a few minutes before one of these flies flew past me and I recognized it as being of the genus Rhaphiomidas, which at that time was considered extinct by most of the people knowledgeable about the species,” Ballmer says. That fly was a San Joaquin Valley giant flower
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