Which bugs are the ickiest to you?

In My Humble Opinion
61

I actually don’t mind bugs and creepy-crawlies that much. Crickets, mantises, slugs, millipedes, whatever. They don’t freak me out. I’ll happily sit in the insect house at the zoo and look through the glass as the giant hissing cockroaches clamber over one another, while my squeamish wife waits impatiently a few windows forward. When I was a kid, I actually used to catch ants and throw them into spiders’ webs. I wasn’t trying to be cruel to the ants; I honestly wanted to be nice to the spiders, which I thought were about the neatest creatures I could imagine (still do).

However. I make two exceptions.

One is rational: wasps. It’s rational because I… well, let me tell you the story. When I was around three, my parents took me to visit one of their friends. While they all chatted, I wandered off, exploring. I found a gazebo: cool! I managed to get the door open and go inside. And when I slammed the door behind me, the impact jarred awake the huge nest of stinging demons on the wall immediately above the frame. I have only the vaguest memory of this, including the door being jerked open in response to my howls and me getting hauled out by my upper arm while everybody swatted the cloud around me, but a vague memory is all I need. It’s been thirty years, and I still have trouble when there’s a yellowjacket in the house.

The second bug I loathe — well, this is totally irrational. As far as I know, it’s harmless. I looked it up one time, but I can’t remember now what it is. It’s a big flying beetle, maybe an inch to an inch and a half in length, half as wide as it is long. Carapace is hard and shiny and reddish brown, with lighter banding. Antennae are feathery. It flies like a dump truck, heavy and slow.

The reason it freaks me out is pretty dumb: it’s the sound. It’s a low-pitch, loud hum, like the biggest fucking wasp you’ve ever heard. It’s just a beetle, but it sounds like a six-pound hornet, and it makes me quiver and jerk in insensible terror.

Any entomologists want to take a guess as to what this thing is? Territory is the Pacific Northwest.

P.S. Do not click this link.

62

Definitely roaches. I refuse to ever live in another place with roaches. I did that in a college apartment for 3 months. If I lived in a place that had them, I would have to consider moving even at the sight of only one roach. Just one would blow it for me. My experience with the college pest control proved to me that once they are in, they can never be driven out. They always came back.

63

All right, so I was curious about my big flying beetle, and I went looking for more info. I’m 99% sure it’s this (more info here). Look especially at the lower picture on this page for an example of the feathered-antenna appearance.

Viewed like this, it’s actually quite a pretty insect, with the rusty hue and the strikingly bright stripes. But when it’s lumbering drunkenly through the air at your head with a VVVVVVVV sound like a yellowjacket in the early stages of a Food of the Gods transformation… yeesh.

64

Oh, barf.

Cervaise your beetle description reminded me of an impressive bug sound. I was at a Rutgers farm for a bug party and we were all tooling around the vegetable garden looking for insects. I was near a road, and I kept hearing a motorcycle getting closer and closer. Suddenly someone shouted out, “Cicada Killer!!!” Sure enough, this freakishly huge wasp (sorry Cervaise) comes flying in, carrying a cicada. Zip, down her lair with her booty she went.

Just as fast, these entophiles pounced on the spot, and dug her and three of her cicada incubators out. Damn, she was LOUD.
I hate to admit I’ve made wreaths out of bugs. I think they can be quite pretty, but I suspect this crowd would be a hard sell.

65

You’ve done what?! :confused:

I’m imagining the episode of Martha Stewart where she shows people how to do this. “I think it’s special to use insects that you’ve found yourself. You can use houseflies, cockroaches, fleas, whatever you find in your home. In this wreath, I’m using aphids from my garden.”

66

I don’t mind bugs, without 'em humanity’d be toast. I’ve got some crickets in the living room that are frog and turtle food.

Ok, lice - ick. My kid had em. Hardy little buggers.
Fleas - yoinks! Getting rid of them is a biatch.

Though I’ve never seen them, and they are thankfully far away, my vote for the human bot fly.
The host fly lands on humans to lick up sweat.
The bot eggs hatch and the larvae burrow into skin.
Bot larvae develop in the skin until they are boysenberry-sized.
Night-nite, don’t let the bed bugs bite.

67

Ewwwwwwwwwwwww Kiwiboy Weta are just hideous and you made me look at a page of them (ok you didn’t I just like frightening myself sometimes) No other bugs or spiders worry me at all…I even used to keep Praying Mantis as pets as a kid. But after putting my foot in a gumboot that contained a Weta I just HATE them. Its the way they know they are too armour plated and prehistoric that they don’t even have to scamper like other bugs, they just stare at you and sloooooooooowly stalk toward you. YUCK YUCK.
Oh they are not that rare in Auckland either!

68

They’re now really bugs, but I have an absolute, irrational, pathological fear/loathing of crawfish.

Yes, crawfish. Those little brown miniature lobster-things. It can all be traced back to an incident four or five years ago. (I think I may have told this story on the board once before) I was helping my parents open up our inground pool for the summer. It’d had a thick, tarp-like cover over it for the entire winter, which apparently provided prime breeding ground for the pinchered demons. I was holding one corner of the cover, my Mom had an opposite corner. As soon as we began to pull it to the other end of the pool, it unleashed a horrific tide of what had to be literally thousands of the little bastards. Imagine, if you will, a writhing, oozing, slimy, clicking wave of crawfish bodies erupting towards you.

I was not amused.

The theing that bothers me the most for some reason is the little fin-like things under their tails, and the way they swish back and forth. I don’t know why, but they strike me as indescribably disgusting.

Ick.

69

I was once walking along a trail in South Carolina, when I heard this startlingly loud buzz/tumbling object sound over my head and looked up in time to see a Cicada-Killer and its prize thoroughly entwined and dropping through leafy branches from what must of had to have been thirty feet up, to plop neatly ( and loudly ) at my feet, two feet in front of me. 'twas cool :).

My favorite in this catgory though, are Tarantula-Hawks. As loud and ponderous as Cervaise’s beetle, only like Cicada-Killers these really ARE gigantic wasps ( a little bigger and IMO louder than Cicada-Killers ), with a blue-black metallic body and huge burnt-orange wings. Scared the beejeezus out of me first time I saw ( and heard ) one buzzing by like some sort of Boeing 747 of the wasp world ;).

  • Tamerlane
70

My friend Darrell ( an entomologist, natch - expert in Phalangolid systematics ), “acquired” one once and carefully nurtured it through its life-cycle in his arm until it finally emerged, complete with a full set of photos :).

Even I’m not that freaky :D.

  • Tamerlane
71

These guys are so cool. We get them up here in northern BC every so often, but I haven’t seen any recently. IIRC, I think that it is the females that have that rusty brown colour. I may be confusing it with another insect though. They do a really cool trick though. I had a couple hanging off of my screen door one night, and being the curious sort, I went to go pick one up. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by a loud hiss! I think it’s actually caused by the movement of there wing covering, but man it was cool.

I used to work at a museum, and we had a small bug collection. It included Hissing cockroaches, Giant Millipedes (about 6-7 inches long) and an Australian Walking Stick. That thing was niftier than all get out. I loved to take the bugs out for the patrons. No matter how much they expressed disgust, they couldn’t help but look.

The bugs that creep me out the most have to be the big bloody black, hairy spiders that you get living in your basement. I was down stairs once, and I saw three!!! at once. I got to tell you it was a hell of a decision deciding who to kill first. I did get two, but the third evaded me. When I do decide to send them to the big basement in the sky, I usually grab the bgigest textbook I can find, drop it on them, then jump up and down on it. Then I wait for a minute to see if the book moves at all. If it doesn’t, I get Kleenex. If it does, I get the twelve gauge.

I also have a dislike for crickets, mostly because that is what my lizard prefers to eat, and I keep a tank of live ones in the house. When I’m feeding her, it’s quite difficult to ensure that none escape, and every so often one will make a break for it, and get away. I usually find them a week or two later, three times the size and icky as hell. In my old apartment, I found one relaxing on the kitchen floor a couple of minutes before the landlady showed up to give me my security deposit ( I was moving out). I originally wasn’t going to do anything, thinking it was just dirt, but then it moved, and I screamed, and it was history.

72

Oh God Oh God Oh god…

Ewww… Ewwwww…
::::Shudder::::

I just picked off an ant crawling on my shoulder. In my bedroom, right after I read this thread. Holy Crap.

I mean…

Arrrrgggghh!!!

Gah!

Now, where did it come from? Are there more? Please don’t let there be more. Oh please…

Normally ants don’t bug (heh) me, but after this thread… urk

At least they are not corn ants. They have wings and stuff. I HATE ants with wings. Just ugh.

Reminds me off my all time most hated insect.The Dobsonfly . Here is a lovely pic. Not the jaws. Did I mention these bugs range from 3-4 inches in length. I see these, and I lose all control of myself. I just freak. I mean like a little girl. There is shrieking involved. Lots of it. And loud. It’s not one of my prouder moments.