Canoeing along a small tributary in the hill country one summer, we started seeing water moccassins on fallen logs and in the stream. This area was pretty tree covered and creepy looking. All of a sudden there’s this flash and a loud “THUNK!”. A freakin’ water moccassin had dropped into our canoe right behind my buddy Brian and in front of me, landing on our gear. These damn things are mean too and plenty agressive. They’ll come at you. We couldn’t jump out because we might land on one, couldn’t hit it because it was crawling around in our stuff and the whole time we’re rocking back and forth, screaming, trying to keep from swamping the canoe. I imagine it might have been amusing to someone on the bank but believe me, we were FREAKING OUT.
Brian did end up abruptly jumping out, causing the boat to almost flip. I pushed the gear formard with my paddle and managed to beach the canoe on a bank, all the while looking up in the trees for any others about to drop in. We lifted articles out with our paddles until we finally scooped the damn thing out. Normally I’ll let wild stuff alone but this one we wacked because it had us so riled up. We pretty much refused to put any of those clothes back on after it had slithered all over them. Just the thought gave us the willies.
Arrgggghhh, I HATE those things! They move those legs with a horribly rippling motion that totally creeps me out! When I had cats, I used to sic the cats on the bugs. They would tear the legs off them, which worked for me.
I lived in a house once that had cave (or camel) crickets. These are crickets that are larger than the cute little chirping crickets, and orders of magnitude uglier. They would occasionally get into the house, but my worst encounter with them was when I had to go into the crawlspace under the house to see about phone wiring. I looked up, and the walls were covered with cave crickets… all just sitting there… looking at me… just waiting…
I have related this story in another spider thread but I will tell you the quick version.
It was Easter and I was maybe 5 or 6, I don’t remember how old but I was young,
looking for eggs hidden in the front yard with my older sister. She always found more than me and we were tied so when I saw this yellow egg near the bushes on the side yard I thought this would be the deal breaker. I rushed as fast as I could towards it and at the last minute stumbled and lurched forward.
The “egg” was a large nest of garden spiders, who make their yellow nests in the middle of their webs. It smashed smack-dab into the middle of my forhead and burst open spilling thousands of tiny garden spiders onto my face. They swarmed across my forhead into my hair, into my ears, crawling into my nose and squirming into my mouth.
Thousands of them. The sound in my ears like a liquid clicking and scraping. The bitter taste of them on my tongue and back of my throat. I could not breath as they had filled my nose and were trying to make their way down my sinuses…
My hands are getting to shaky to type anymore.
My therapists says I will get over it some day…I doubt it.
«Ðëëp¤F®ïêd»™, why, why, why!! I just…thats so…I can’t imagine…whimper
Sickest mental image that I have ever had the opportunity to have imprinted in my brain. FOR LIFE! That image will never leave me! My future children will never hunt for easter eggs!
OK…Ions ago (when dinosaurs roamed the earth), I was 17 and an aquaintence of my family granted us use of a beach house on Oahu. As opportunities like this didn’t happen every day, and the house slept 8, we all flew out, excited & cheerful. What we found was a hous that had started to have been reclaimed by the nearby jungle.
Well, we scrubbed it up. And we did have fun, but it was always a little funky. Anyhow, one day as i’m taking a bath (no shower) my brother in law comes in. He sees me, frowns, and says “QM, get out of the tub. NOW, God-Dammit!!!” Now, he was fairly wirey, strong and pissed off, so I got out of the tub. As I walked past him, he picked up a Timberland Boot and threw it as hard as he could at the floor. Later, after I got dressed, I asked him why he was so pissed off. He told me he wasn’t pissed off, but there was a poisonous caterpillar that was crawling up the outside of the tub.
By the way, these caterpillars must have hard external skeletons, because the boot Bounced Off It, and it just wiggled its way out the window behind the tub .
PS- can any one from Hawaii please confirm these caterpillars, as I never got to see the damn thing.
You know, I blame this thread for the interminable dream I had last night involving hordes of giant man-eating bats. Just thought you’d like to know. Carry on.
Many many years ago I was folding the washing (laundry) and a spider fell out of my knickers. I nearly passed out - but couldn’t for fear I’d fall on to the spider. Every day since then, I shake, check, shake, check my knickers before I put them on. And one time, I went to bed, and a big spider ran across the duvet and vanished somewhere, I slept in the spare bedroom …
Well my brother and I have both had painful insect run-ins, I reckon mine was worse but hey
My Story
Got out of the shower and put on my jocks and pants (did I mention I had just got them off the line ?). Well got dressed walked out of the bathroom and then…
According to my flatmates:-
I screamed luck a stuck pig, proceeded to pull of my pants/jocks and jump all over them.
From my perspective:-
All I knew was that something huge was trying to eat my testicle and if I was ever going to have children I had to get out of my clothes…
What actually happened :- While on the line a wasp had gotten tangled in my jocks I had then further annoyed it by making it share my jocks with various parts of my anatomy. It managed to get in two good shots before I kill it, I suffered considerable pain compounded by the humilation of the Dr. doubling over with laughter while the whole thing was explained to him.
My brothers Story
He had gone down to Sydney and was doing some visiting a friends house out in the sticks. They were walking down to a fishing creek when on of these bit him…though his shoe. He was rushed to hospital and given the antivenom but he reckons it was a pretty rough ride and he is still not back to 100% especially the leg he was bitten on…nasty bastards those funnel webs
Last year, I met some friends at a local golf course. We met at the clubhouse and, while they parked in the middle of the lot, I parked next to a row of pine trees along the outer edge.
After the round, we were walking back through the lot and noticed that the darker cars along the tree line seemed to “sparkle” and the lighter colored cars were “spotted”. Then we looked down. The pavement around the cars and along the trees was covered in a fine web and moving with zillions of tiny spiders. The “sparkle” on the darker cars was more of the web and the “spots” on the white cars were more of the spiders.
Its tough to put your clubs in your trunk while hopping around.
As my friends laughed and made their way to the safety of the inner-lot, I kicked my door handle several times to kill a few spiders collecting around the area and leapt in my car. The drive home was full of tickles and itches, some of which were more spiders, some weren’t.
OK… this ain’t NEARLY as horrible as some of the other posts here, but I’ve just GOT to add my own tale to the shudders horror stories in this here thread!
A few years ago, I was tucked up nice ‘n’ snug in bed, sleeping the night away (as you do at 3am…) when the 'phone rang. So I sleepily haul myself out of bed and flop BAREFOOT (you know where this is going already!) down the stairs to the phone table.
Now… this was the ONLY time I ever wandered about barefoot in my house ever! And quite WHY the slug had decided at that PRECISE moment to be in that PRECISE spot by the phone I cannot imagine.
All I know is that I felt a cold, slippy wetness under my foot, followed by an audible and tactile ‘pop’ as said slug BURST…
UNDER MY FOOT!!!
(If you could only see the expression on my face as I type this…)
What’s worse is that the phone call was from some loon asking me how to operate a DAT machine… “PRESS “PLAY”, YOU LUMPHEAD - WHILE I GO A. BE SICK and B. WASH THE POPPED SLUG OFF MY FOOT!!!”
Ah, ah! funny wyntar ! It reminds me of what happenned to me a couple years ago. I was digging a trench on the hill above my Mom’s house. It was summertime, I was surrounded by bees, flyes, wasps and all sorts of flying and buzzing creatures. From time to time I would slap my face to get rid of a too curious one, or dunk to avoid a scuicidal one.
Well, I was digging deeper and deeper when suddently something buzzed in my shorts, next to my crotch ! Horror! I made a huge jump, my heart racing and my body generating levels of adrenaline unseen before, my hands slamming on the buzzing part ! … Until I realized it was my cellphone in my pocket, put on vibrator mode… Ahemmm…
…Oh, and then there was the time when the family lived out in South Africa (I was a little kiddie then!) and I saw somethnig that looked like a huge, brown jumper stuffed under my parent’s double bed.
So - being about 7 years old and therefore able to crawl under said bed - I just had to be Miss Helpful and pull the “jumper” out and put it somewhere more suited for a woolley garment.
I reached out my hand and grabbed DIRT. Which crumbled and HUNDREDS of TERMITES literally cascaded out of a two meter long by half a meter high TERMITE MOUND!!!
TERMITES had decided to move in and set up home in OUR HOUSE!!! They had gone in UNDER the house and built UP!!! I think I screamed like I have never screamed before and ran (still screaming) to my mom and Dad yelling "THERE’S TERMITES UNDER YOUR BED!!!)
“Shuttup and don’t be stupid!” says Dad “…and don’t go giving your mother and I such a fright like that again!”
So I go back. By now the floor is just flooded with thousands of little bronze and white creepy crawlies!!! I think I screamed again and THIS time grabbed Mom…
…
I think that must be the only time in history where a vacuum cleaner has been used to hoover up a nest of termites (it took several goes!) Mom called the exterminators who came the next morning but she said she could hear the little beggars munching away merrily ALL NIGHT rebuilding the nest!!
(Dad meanwhile - had poured PETROL down a suspect hole and set fire to it. Much amusement was had by the little whisps of smoke that were popping up all over the lawn through termite exit holes…)
Africa can be very frightening. My grand parents had friends in Ivory Coast and they went there a couple of times. Their friends had a nice house next to the laguna. At night all the crabs would get out of the sea and go in-land. So when my grand facther woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom he was quite surprise to see the floor littered with crawling crabs!
But the most frigthening experience they had was when they went for a ‘safari’ like trip. They had several guides with them, but one never came back: the other guides told them that a nest of ants hung in the trees falled on him and he died from this attack…
