Not animals but book me a seat on the “I hate those creepy, rat-assed bastards of arachnia” train. The dog caught one the size of a canned ham yesterday and watching him eat it while it tried to crawl out of his mouth made me heave and squick simultaneously.
I’m not afraid of cats, and I actually do like them but picking a cat up sort of creeps me out. I know they aren’t fragile, but when you pick them up you can feel their bones and I’m always afraid I’m going to hurt them.
Spiders I love! They fascinate me. When my son was young I used to build boxes and put them outside under the trees. All of their webs looked different.
He didn’t share the spider thrill.
It’s not like I stand a chance of ever running into one, but I can’t abide African hyenas. Their blunt brown snarly muzzles and their eerie whooping make me shudder with disgust. Sometimes I watch those Lions vs. Hyenas nature documentaries just in the hopes of seeing the lions off a few hyenas.
Also, those hideous big tropical centipedes, about which we have posted our loathing ad nauseum here on the Dope. They’re the only creepy-crawly which truly terrifies me.
I don’t gross out over monkeys much, but I’m scared shitless of baboons–there’s something so implacable and scary about them, they’re like dog/human hybrids and I’m not crazy about the technicolor buttholes, either.
Hyenas freak me out a bit, so misshapen, unfinished and dirty looking, bleah…
If I ever saw a pangolin walking around unrestrained I might get a bit freaked out.
Centipedes. shudder Ditto millipedes, those things are just not right.
I love just about all animals, even spiders. When my son comes over with his wife, I have to make sure I pick up all the spiders that might be living in my house and put them outside. She is absolutely terrified, horror-film shrieking freaked-out. I will put a spider on my hand and watch it walk up my arm. My husband tends to squash a spider every now and then if I’m not looking, but he’s not scared of them.
On the other hand, a simple garden slug horrifies me. My worst nightmare is to touch one when I go to pick vegetables from the garden. <Chilled to the bone just imagining that feel now>
I had no idea there were so many of us who don’t like monkeys/apes/etc! I hate them and they creep me out, and usually when I mention that, people act like I am the biggest grinch ever. They have creepy, grabby hands! Gah! Those little tiny ones, like organ grinder monkeys, are especially bad, because 1. people put clothes on them, and 2. they are small so they could hide in something like a breadbox and then jump out and touch you with their creepy hands. Baboons are nearly in a Creep League of their own.
I am also seriously creeped out by eels. They just seem so … floppy. Ugh. I’m not bothered by snakes, so I’m not really sure why eels set me off so much. You’d think they’d be the same. In theory, I can see how electric eels are cool, in a sense, but I have very strong opinions that electric eels should go off somewhere and be cool very, very, very far away from me.
As a cat-lover myself, I was surprised to discover that I find this almost endearing!
I recently moved to Portland. First order of business was to check out a local golf course. I had never seen, nor heard, of this animal before in my entire life until I laid eyes on about five of them, all wet and squawky, lurking around my ball.
I’m sure all the other golfers enjoyed me running directly across three fairways shrieking like a toddler in order to get away from them.