another vote for cockroaches, especially the airborne ones without a proper flying licence.
LOL, being attacked by an undead icky insect. :eek:
Beadalin, I opened the link you posted, and had to get my husband to close it, as I was engaged in backing away from the computer. Those are common house centipedes, the ones I posted about. I hate them. Hate hate hate. They’re the weirdest, creepiest things I’ve ever seen. They have too many frickin’ legs and they’re disgusting. I’m pretty sure God didn’t make them- I think they crawled out of the primordial, eternally existent ooze or something.
I am so icked out by bugs I can only skim this thread. If I actually stopped to read it, I would be seriously freaked out. I am too impressed some of you looked up links, but you couldn’t pay me to click on them. <squirming>
For bugs I might actually run across, the ones that are the worst to me are the leaping bugs–crickets, grasshoppers, and the like. Yuck, yuck, yuck.
If I am considering all bugs I know of (and really, I try to avoid knowing a lot), hissing cockroaches are the worst. I once saw a exhibit of them at a zoo and found myself having nightmares for days. Absolutely the worst.
For all the cricket haters, meet the various species of weta .
Imagine if you will a grasshopper-like insect that can grow up to 90 mm long and weigh as much as a small bird. They can live for up to four years.
They’re pretty rare and actually kind of neat (from a safe distance…)
Praying mantis.
Intellectually, they’re way cool and interesting. But I had a bad experience with one once. When I was a kid I got one to sit on my arm. It remained motionless while I examined it, fascinated.
Then, with no warning whatsoever, it leaped right onto my face. Pure horror.
So emotionally, I hate the little bastards.
Black widows and cetipedes…ick! I spent part of Saturday digging trough a rock pile in our back yard. It was full of both of these creatures and by the end of the day it felt like I had things crawling all over me. My wife was wondering why I kept smacking my pants legs. Because there’s nothing crawling all over my legs and it’s freaking me out! ACK!
One night when I was about 16, I was in the family room watching Dark Crystal on TV, laying on the hide-a-bed, and generally enjoying the fact that my parents were gone for the night. Our cat (whose name was Abscess :)), came in through the dog door with what looked like a bird in her mouth (I’m thinking, oh great, a dead bird in the house). She drops the “bird” and it isn’t dead…it’s not even a bird…it’s a freaking MOTH the size of a sparrow and it’s now careening through the house like it just smoked half a pound of crack. I finally caught the thing (after a lot of running around in circles yelling at the cat) using a mixing bowl and a dinner plate (I certainly wasn’t going to touch that mutant thing) and set it loose outside. Moths don’t bother me at all but that thing freaked me out. I’ve never seen another one like it…very strange.
spiders
I can’t even type it full size, fearing that by uttering its name I am somehow summoning one of the evil beasts. I can understand how others are icked by centipedes or flys or praying mantises (mantii?), but please people. These things are just bugs. spiders are actually small, multi-legged minions of the Devil.
I must go now…I hear him coming. Nothing scarier-sounding than an eight-legged gallop.
Spiders really don’t bother me, oddly enough. Usually they hide themselves away, and if they do venture out, often they’re just content to sit there. Whereas my mother would scream and stamp on the thing, I just leave it there so the dog can come along later and eat it up. It’s not going to do me any harm in the meantime.
Mind you, the typical house spider seen in the UK sounds much more tame than the ones you get across the pond. I don’t think I’d want to venture out into my garden if there were black widows scuttling around. Luckily, our cooler weather means we don’t see some of the more “exotic” species, which is fine by me.
Kat, you’re not the only one who hates June bugs. While they’re harmless enough, their habit of dive-bombing scares the shit out of me, and I always end up crying like a big sissy. Seeing my neighbour’s cat crunching on one made me feel quite sick, it has to be said.
ROACHES! I hate roaches! I am usually a pretty tough chick, and typically I will free bugs into “the urban wild” rather than kill them. But if I see a roach, it’s onto the highest perchable surface! (It doesn’t help that I once lived in a really disgusting apartment and had one fall into my hair from the ceiling as I slept. I woke up because I felt it crawling around. :eek: )
Yep, centipedes. Scary as hell. And that “thousand-legger” thingie that Beadalin mentioned? Hoo-boy, get me the hell outta here.
Millipedes, on the other hand, don’t bother me at all. We have one here, and it’s not slimy or sluggy in the least. It’s more plasticky, its body is a hard shell, and it legs are so small and nonthreatening, I’m not nervous about it at all. In fact, I think it’s kinda cute, munching happily on its lettuce and banana chunks, and drinking water.
My cousin was working on a project for science class in high school. It was your standard garden variety “look for different types of insects, arthropods, and various other crawly invertebrates, and display them” project. I was hanging out, helping him one Sunday, and we discovered this grubby type, erm… thing. We took a closer look, and I swear, it had this rather human-esque look to its face, and it moved its mandibles as if it were talking to us. My cousin threw the thing out into the field as hard and as far as he possibly could.
And here I am, eight years later, still shuddering because I had to read this damn thread and remember.
I love youse guys.
Ticks are at the top of my list of things that I’d be happy never to see again. Just the thought that they lie in wait for any warm-blooded creature to pass by so they can attach themselves to said creature (including me or you!) for DAYS and slowly suck their blood - possibly passing along some horrible disease while they are at it - well, I’m lightheaded just thinking about it. Not to mention the sheer unadulterated grossness that is the body of a well-fed tick. UGH.
I am no fan of fleas, either. Our dogs got them one year and they were hell to get rid of. Plus I kept thinking how it must have felt for the poor dogs - having little tiny bloodsucking creatures running all over your body and biting you - that would have driven me insane.
Funny that so many people mentioned camel crickets. They don’t bother me at all - in fact, I think little ones are kinda cute. Which is a good thing, because here in the South they are everydamnwhere. We even had an albino race of camel crickets that lived under our house in Virginia - they were white with very pale brown spots.
Another vote for those disgusting rippling centipedes that you find in a state of repose in the bathtub. Ugh!
The ickiest creature I ever faced was (thankfully) in a foreign land.
I was with my wife in her parents’ home in Rio de Janiero. She opened one of the bottom kitchen cabinets to get a pot and a spider that appeared to have a leg-spread like my outstretched hand suddenly appeared and skittered across the tile floor. The most unsettling part was that its legs were slick. It looked like the biggest tarantula you ever saw on a nature program, but with no fur.
It moved fast. It shot around the corner and into the bathroom. We ran after it, knowing that no-one could leave such a beast loose in the house. It had disappeared, obviously well-hidden within the wicker clothes hamper.
My sister-in-law corageously used a broom handle to raise and shake each piece of clothing from the basket until we got to the bottom. She then tipped the basket; the spider fell out; multiple brooms came down on it in a flash.
I don’t ever want to see one of those again.
I don’t like flies and roaches, but the bug that really creeps me out is a Wind Scorpion. http://dine.sanjuan.k12.ut.us/heritage/land/animals/bugs/wind_scorpion.htm http://kaweahoaks.com/html/wind_scorpian.htm I watched one eat a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. It was an eating machine and didn’t stop until there was nothing left but bones and skin.
Eek! My sister is a wind scorpion! Oh…no…wait…she finishes off the bones too. Phew!
And as an afterthought, I read the link provided by DaToad and saw that the horrific little creature is endangered. How sad. I’ll happily stamp on the very last one if someone will let me.
Nothing in this world is as horrendious as the spider. shudder
I think I have a borderline phobia when it comes to spiders. I cannot deal with those guys. It’s just so HORRIBLE to walk into a room, turn on the light and see this tiny brown missle with 8 legs scurry under the nearest piece of furnature. More than once, I’ve migrated to the couch after finding a spider on my bed/in my room. Ick.
I started reading this thread with my feet on the floor. When I was finished reading this thread, my feet were up on a stool and I had to check under my desk with a flashlight–twice.
All we have here are earwigs. I hate them.
Beadalin, is your thousand-legger the same as my silverfish? They look the same to me. ::shiver:: They. Are. Evil.
I’ve spent my entire life doing what I can to deplete the insect population. Last year, the insects fought back. They must have called in their big guns, because this bad boy was Goliath with an exoskeleton. I’m pretty sure it was some kind of dragonfly, but I’ve never seen one that size before. The thing was almost as big as my head. Where a normal dragonfly tail would be, this thing had a long, black, pointed appendage that looked like a syringe. It was at a friend’s apartment, sticking to the wall. When it began to fly, we both ran for our lives. This is the kind of stuff horror movies are made of.
Spiders, preying mantis and centipedes??! Wussy bugs. A spider may bite you and I have a healthy respect for tarantulas but centipedes and crickets cant harm you and preying mantises are helpful bugs.
Roaches are icky but this piddly candy-assed american variety is nothing compared to the asian kind. Them mothers are an inch to an inch and a half long. They are very dark brown. They go anywhere and everywhere whether its clean or dirty. They like moist environments and they come out at night and the positively most evil thing this disgusting creature possess is the ability to fly straight into your face when you are trying to kill it. In the dark they crawl up the walls, all over the floor and into everything.
GAAAAHHHHHk* just thinking about them gives me the willies!!