Bugs, arachnids, insects, crustaceans of any kind, soft bodied critters such as some kind of worm?
For me it’s earwigs. Really, what the ever-lovin eff are these things good for? I suppose if I had chickens, they might supply some small bit of protein now and then, but other than that, what use are they?
They squick me right the hell out, that’s what. (For those who can’t tell, a squick is the direct polar opposite of a sqee)
Anyway, nasty, hiding under stuff, clanning up in large groups, the way they act really reminds me of cockroaches. Earwigs, uughhhh
Flies disgust me. Cockroaches make me want to puke. Spiders just creep me out (for most spiders; oddly enough, there are a few that don’t bother me). Mice and rats really gross me out.
This reminds me of the first time I realized that you could find the answer to anything on Google. I saw this bug crawling in my living room. I had no idea what it was so I googled “evil looking bug” and the first hit was an earwig. Eww. I’ve haven’t seen another one since which is fine with me.
Fast, clickety, hairy, and dark seem to be the features I dislike most. A lot of spiders are very fast. Cicadas and flying cockroaches are very clickety. Spiders are also hairy. Large sizes can also play a part.
I am not afraid of bees or wasps, or mantises or stick insects, or butterflies and moths and caterpillars and centipedes. Most others fall in the above range of clickety, hairy, and fast, though.
Centipedes. I’m totally OK with sharing my living space with spiders. Obviously flies and mosquitoes annoy me (and hornets may frighten me), but centipedes squick me out.
As far as I’m concerned, pretty much all insects suck. However, I have a strong animosity towards anything in the wasp family. I basically want them all dead, and wiping out a wasp/hornet/yellow jacket nest rates as high with me as seeing a really good movie.
Swarms of buzzing insects that I can’t see. One time I was walking in Wekiva State Park and either sweat bees or sweat dragonflies (is that a thing?) followed me around for miles and I could never get a good look at them. I assumed they wanted to drink the fluids off my body but I’m not sure. They never did sting.
There is squick and there is hate. Different categories. I have no squick nor animus towards the vast majority of the teeming insect kingdom, quite the reverse. There are a couple though …
Cockroaches will actually make me nauseous. A combination of reading a story about a mummy’s curse at an impressionable age late at night (I do not remember anything about the story except that the grave robber dies by being eaten from the inside out by scarab beetles which I conflated with cockroaches somehow) and living in an inner city area where they crawled over any unwatched food and the opening of kitchen drawers was usually accompanied by a scrabbling sound, imbued me with a lifelong squeam. I don’t mind real dung beetles at all, though.
Hate: deerflies, which raise painful welts on my horses, make trail riding a torment in the summer months unless draped with netting (no chemical repels them at all), and force the horses to spend their summer daylight hours inside the barn in the dark, in front of fans (they graze at night; mosquitoes can be dealt with).
We aren’t too troubled by them on this property but out West the yellow jackets aka ground bees – they are communal wasps not bees – were terrifying. Almost killed my dog once, chased me through the woods many a time. Hate them too.
Another vote for centipedes and millipedes. Nothing should have that many legs.
I also hate maggots. We once went on a trip over a four-day weekend. I remember cleaning up and seeing a fly buzz out of the area under our sink where the trash can lives. I didn’t think much of it, but we forgot to take out the trash before we hit the road. When we got back, the interior of the trash can under the sink and under the trash can was crawling with maggots. It was one of the most disgusting things I can remember EVER seeing.
We have a couple tables in the backyard with those big outdoor umbrellas, and for some reason earwigs like to hang out in the closed umbrellas. I’ve had a few at a time rain down on my head when opening them up. Not fun.
None of those mentioned really squick me out, I have to admit. It’s just part of nature, the circle of life, etc. I certainly don’t want them in my house, or hurting me when I’m outside, but otherwise meh.
They look like caterpillars, but are incomparably grosser. I’m not sure why – it might be their locomotion, or their appearance. Certainly it’s partly the fact that they tend to be in great numbers. we once had a virtual squirming colony of them in our dog’s outside food dish. seen through the transparent side, forming a squirming mass, they were one of the grossest things I ever saw.
But even worse was the time my landlord – who ran a “roach van” food truck on the side – left a bunch of spoiled food in the garbage cans. we knew there were larvae in there, but decided to kill them off by dumping a lot of insecticide into the can.
Bad idea. The maggot came streaming out of the can, crawling up the sides with astonishing speed and dropping off the outside and crawling away in all directions. We weren’t prepared for such an Explosion of Maggots, and had to run back quickly to avoid being overtaken. If the garbage can had been full of caterpillars they just would’ve died.
