The ox of the starry heavens

I found this little guy -- or rather, by insect standards, this very large guy -- in front of the maintenance shed, right in front of a old-fashioned "besom" broom.

It's a citrus long-horned beetle (Anoplophora chinensis), known more poetically in Chinese as 星天牛, the ox of the starry heavens. I had never seen one before and wasn't at all familiar with the species. Despite what I can now see is its clearly herbivorous anatomy, I was at first misled by its very superficial resemblance to an oversized tiger beetle and assumed it was a predator.

The phrase "the besom of destruction" (Isaiah) popped into my head, conveying the idea that the beetle was in danger and that I should save it, which I rationalized as a concern that, since some people see all large arthropods as cockroaches, the maintenance man might kill it. Wary of its powerful-looking mandibles, I didn't want to pick it up directly, so I held a pair of pruning shears in front of it. It very cooperatively climbed onto them, and I transferred it to a branch of a nearby frangipani tree.

An hour or so later, I realized that this had been the anticipated second appearance -- as an arthropod rather than an apparition -- of the entity I'd dubbed Cary Yale. ("We'll see if 'Cary' ever shows up again," I had written, "or if it was just a one-off anomaly.") Here, for your reference, is my description of the original apparition:

What I saw was something like a spotted bobcat (white spots on fur of a dark indeterminate color). It had a large pair of horns, which protruded out to the sides and then curved up and in, for a somewhat heart-like effect. It looked down at me from the stairs, communicated with great telepathic clarity the two words "I'm Cary," and then ran upstairs in the direction of the chapel.

I immediately thought, That's a yale. That's a heraldic beast called a yale. He's saying he's Cary Yale.

Both creatures were dark with white spots and long, curved horns protruding out to the sides. In each case I originally thought of the creature as "feline" (bobcat, tiger beetle) and then decided it was an "ungulate" (yale, ox).  I had worried about the beetle's sharp mandibles, even though it turned out to be an herbivore. The yale is also an herbivore which looks like it could deliver a nasty bite.

The yale's most distinctive trait is its swiveling horns, which it can turn to point in different directions. No real ungulate's horns can do that, but the antennae of the ox of the starry heavens can.

Just as the Cary apparition began near the bottom of a staircase and then ran upstairs, the beetle began on the ground and ended up in a tree.

The Cowboy Bebop syncs may also be relevant, since “oxen of the starry heavens” sound like what a space cowboy would herd.