When I googled for a picture of "tortoise beetle," this image appeared (on
second page of listings):
http://bugguide.net/node/view/10175/bgimage

For those of us old enough to remember seeing -- and holding! --
mercury, the Golden Tortoise Beetle is exactly as Kira described it.

Anne
"Steve" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Kira Dirlik !! wrote:
Anyone know what the little liquid gold beetles are? They are about
1/3 size of japanese beetles, and look like drops of mercury (but
bright gold in color) on my now lacey morning glory leaves.

Probably Tortoise Beetles:
http://ipm.ncsu.edu/AG295/html/tortoise_beetles.htm

--
Steve