Really! I was waiting at the bookdrop this morning and WHAM! Something hit me hard in the ear! Hard enough to knock me back a bit, at any rate, and it still kind of hurts. My first thought was that it was a person who just came up and swatted me, but I spin around and I see what it was - a giant bug. I think it must have been a locust - giant grasshoppery thing at least four inches long. Never seen its like here in South Carolina.
It was as surprised as I was. It’s probably posting right now to its HiveJournal about how some giant human came up and punched it in the head.
It shook it off and flew away, and the homeless guys howled with laughter, as did the meter maid guy ticketing people on the road. He looked at my face and said “I saw it too!” I said “So I’m not crazy? There really was a giant bug that hit me in the ear?” and he said “I ain’t sayin’ nothing about your crazy, but I saw the bug!”
Mundane, pointless, and had-to-shareable? Check.
Thank goodness I’m not one of the people here who’s scared of bugs! (Now, if it had been a cockroach…) What the hell was a giant grasshoppery thing like that doing here? The only place I’ve seen them that big is in South Dakota, and I really think this guy was bigger than the ones I saw there. Kind of yellowy brown, kind of skinny.
What may be the worst thing is that I know there’s a security camera trained on the bookdrop. So they’re probably laughing their asses off in the security office right now. Even worse, I imagine, is if you can’t see the bug on the footage.
Years ago when I rode a motorcycle I was driving along and a large bug hit me in the chest. It felt like someone punched me or had thrown a baseball at me. I had a huge bruise that covered more than a handspan on my upper right chest, just below the shoulder.
No, this guy was definitely grasshopper-shaped - he had stripes, and he had those long back legs. Very angular. On looking at pictures of locusts, though, he was skinnier than that.
I do think now that a cicada was that weird bug we saw hanging out on the porch ceiling yesterday. I’d never seen one with its insides before - just the shed exoskeleton.
I’ve been lucky to this point with bugs and my scooter. My dad hit a bee or something when he was my age and riding shirtless on somebody’s motorcycle going 55 or so. I don’t think he really rode much before then, but I know he didn’t care to after.
Q: How can you tell a happy biker?
A: by the number of bugs on her teeth!
Bugs on bikers: I was riding my motorcycle north on I-55 one fine day. Due to the excellent weather that day, I was just wearing an open face helmet with sunglasses. Suddenly, a dark spot loomed ahead and - SPLAT!! A moth to the forehead. Man, those guys are JUICY!
Similarily I was riding a motorcycle down the interstate and saw a massive bug from 50 feet away (it was that huge) flying in a path that would soon intersect with my helmet. It nailed me like getting shot with a paintball gun and rung my helemt like a cowbell, BwooNGwooNGwooNGwooNGwooNG!
Could it have been one of these guys? Scroll down for the pics, they have a couple different color phases. According to that site they go as far north as parts of North Carolina. They get pretty frickin’ huge and I would scream like a girl if one hit me. I hate them for the way they keep chowing on my plants.
I went through a swarm of really big bugs last week one night on a rural road in my car. Three or four hit the leading edge of the hood and left 2 or 3 inch long brown splats. Sounded like rocks hitting. Several hit my windshield too.
You’d better hope it isn’t an Indonesian Striped Pseudolocust. While the adult is omnivorous, the larval form is strictly carnivorous; the female lays its eggs by flying at full speed at an animal host and striking the flesh with its sharpened ovipositor, leaving the egg capsule deep in the target. After a period of days, the larvae burst forth and consume the host animal from within. You may very well have baby pseudolocusts just waiting to eat your brain.
