They’re the good guys (eat the bugs that eat your plants).
Mosquitos in clouds-the rain was intense a few weeks ago here. The oak leaf gall mites-which bite the hell out of you and itch like the devil–I had 14 bites. This summer we had the cicadas as well. The bats are feasting on the mosquitos, thank goodness.
I like the bees and wasps in the back yard. I like the spiders as well–a lot of orb spiders this year. I really don’t mind any insect (except mosquitos) OUTSIDE. If it’s in my house-- I kill it.
On the plus side, we counted three hummingbirds zipping around the plumbagos this evening. 
A tarantula? In Missouri?
Here, hands down, it’s slugs. I suppose they crawl. Or ooze. Whatever, they’re disgusting. They’re like a cross between snot and poo, except they move. And there’s slime.
I hate slugs.
God has it in for you?
I’m in Seattle, and a while back I came home to find a quail on my front porch. Not creepy, just odd.
By the way, if it’s a small rattlesnake (4-5’ or less) with a diamond, or lozenge, pattern that fades out near the tail stay way away from it. It’s probably a Mojave rattlesnake which is an exceedingly dangerout critter.
:eek:
Merciful God (who apparently has it in for me), that looks just like it. Like I said, it was about 5 feet long and had very pronounced looking rattles – almost like black and white stripes.
I’m. Not. Over. It.
Cervaise, want to trade visitors?
Edited to add: I’m in Southern Arizona, according to your cite, their range doesn’t go down this far. Still, it looks just like it.
LiveOnAPlane, speaking as a previous resident of Micronesia, aren’t you forgetting some things?
Above water:
– enormous flying cockroaches
– centipedes that sting
Below water:
– crown-of-thorns starfish
– regurgitating sea urchins
We had all of the above on Pohnpei, in addition to what you are describing. But Pohnpei is a high island - don’t cockroaches like atolls?
Recently a practical joke went awry, and one of the huntsman spiders I had escaped it’s enclosure in my room. I still haven’t been able to find the friggin’ thing.
Tarantulas in Missouri: http://www.conservation.mo.gov/nathis/arthopo/mospider/kinds.htm
Perhaps it was looking for a meal, as I frequently get crickets in the house and tarantulas are reputed to eat them. Oh, and you can see our brown recluse spiders at the bottom of the same page. Watch out when you’re getting into hidey places!
Slugs, yeah…We get 'em here, but the biggest I’ve even seen in the house was maybe 2"; I’ve read in the past that they achieve B-horror-movie-size in the Pacific Northwest…that’s just TOO big for a living glob of something!
I know you mean well, and that this is good info and all, but I have to laugh.
Put it this way: IF I run across a snake–ANY snake–I am liable to be too busy freaking out and screaming (if I don’t faint dead away) to notice the fading pattern etc. Someone once told me the difference between the coral snake and something else–one is deadly, the other harmless. Something to do with the sequence of stripes. Anyway, I am not going to be able to recall the proper sequence at the necessary time!
hate snakes and am afraid of them. Yes, they are needed and I would never hurt one. Just stay away from me. Ugh.
My feelings exactly. By the way, it’s a Coral and King Snake poem:
Red and yellow, kill a fellow
Red and black, won’t hurt Jack
[either reptile, utterly vile]
…quietly puts Missouri on list of Places To Never Visit.
Two inch slugs? I wish we had two-inch slugs here. We have slugs that are aiming for 10 inches… It makes me shudder.
Thank Og, nothing too bad - that I’ve seen. We have rats around, I’m told, but I have never seen one. Maybe the cutesy bunnies who live under our shed scare them off?
Good lord!
Here in PA’s (rapidly disappearing) farm country we can claim stinkbugs (don’t ask), thousand-leggers in the sink (always, can’t figure if they just get stuck there or if they’re coming up from the drain), bees, wasps, giant moths, mosquitos, black flies, bats (used to think they were gross but have now come to appreciate), deer (used to think they were nice, but after two ran into our cars in separate events I’m not so sure, and yes they ran into the car and not the other way around), mice, moles, cats that emit blood-curdling screams in the middle of the night, all manner of insects and crawling bugs.
For a long while we had daily encounters with a kind of bug that when newborn would drop from the ceiling, looking sort of like lightning bug only with red marks, usually landing on a lampshade, we relocated them outside always. Left unchecked, they’d grow into a much larger bug that walked on legs instead of flying, the bigger they got, the grosser.
One time a big burly Comcast cable dude refused to go down into the basement on account of the spiders. Claimed they were brown recluse spiders and poisonous. The exterminator who came a few days later said that he’d been exterminating in this area for decades and had never seen a brown recluse spider, said ours were typical basement spiders and basically harmless.
None of this compares to scorpions and rattlesnakes however. Thanks for the creepiest thread. ever.
Remember, it’s not the ones you see that are a problem…
Now, really… How could you fear the fine state of Missouri when you share your province with this File:Banana Slug Closeup2.jpg - Wikipedia?
It’s yellow, it’s like living mucus, it’s hermaphroditic, it’s as big as my foot! Of all the critters in this thread, I think you have the disgustingest one yet.
bloody craneflies. I’d swap them for your lizards any day - they are completely harmless, but there’s something about their random, flappy indoor flight behaviour that just makes me panic.
You must have missed “Very Vaguely Creepy.” Sadly, the original appears to have been purged from the archives, but here’s a sequel that almost measures up.
And 3acresandatruck, a banana slug the size of your foot? Pshaw. Here in the Pacific Northwest, they’re the length of your leg; we lash them together and use them to haul freight. …Slowly.
Oh, god, where to begin. We have huge wolf spider the size of your hand. We have bats with 3’ (yes, feet, not inches) wingspans. We have freakish cenipedes with 2" long legs. We have Habu vipers that coil up and fling their bodies–fangs out–at you as you try to kill them with your tiny shovel because they were attacking the neighbor’s cat.
On the other hand, we have nice weather in winter, and a beautiful ocean view. It’s all a trade-off. And the only things that really freak me out are the spiders.