Two legs good! Six legs bad!

If it slithers, stretches, creeps or crawls, you know you've got a good story. Tell us about the earwigs, the silverfish, the roaches, lizards and spiders that still haunt you at night.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Answers

I have two. The first one involves June bugs. I HATE June bugs. They freak me out beyond belief. I think I'm phobic about them. I know they don't bite or anything, but they're so... erratic. You never know what direction they're going to fly in. And they make that loud buzzing noise, and you can't squash them because they're so fat and crunchy... eewwww... anyway, back when I used to spend summers home from college at my mom's, I worked part-time. My shift usually ended at 9 p.m., so my mom would leave the porch light on -- which would attract every June bug in all of Vermont, I think. I got home one night, and the door was crawling with the nasty little suckers, so I stayed by my car and smoked a cigarette, to get my courage up. Then I did my usual sprint toward the door, ran inside, slammed it behind me... quick, so no bugs would follow me in. Just as I ran through the door, I felt a "THWACK!" on my forehead, and then heard that godawful buzzing... a June bug had gotten stuck in my hair, just at my hairline. It was buzzing like mad, and twisting around, so by the time my mom came to help, it was hopelessly tangled. She had to cut the clump of hair off around the bug, with me having hysterics the whole time. She had to give me a good slug of brandy and let me smoke three cigarettes in the house to calm me down. *shudder*

The second is just creepy. Same house, I think a different summer. My mom lived in a basement apartment, and she had ants that particular year. The big icky black ants. Not a lot of them, but enough. I was sitting on the couch one night, reading, when I noticed an ant crawling around by my leg. I grabbed a shoe and squashed it, and then got a Kleenex and cleaned up the dead ant bits. I thought I got it all, but... I went out for a cigarette, and when I went back in and sat back down, I felt this incredibly sharp pain in the back of my leg. I had shorts on, so I looked, and saw this weird black thing embedded in my skin. I tried to brush it off, and found that it was quite firmly attached, and it was moving. I looked a little closer and saw that it was the ant's head, just the head, with the little jaws dug into my skin and chewing. I'm a big baby -- I screamed. (hey, it was weird AND it hurt a whole lot.) My mom came running, and pulled me into the bathroom to look in better light. Even she recoiled at the dead-zombie ant head, but she grabbed the tweezers and pulled it off. It took a good chunk of leg, too -- I have a tiny scar on the back of my thigh from it. The Ant who Came Back for Revenge!

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

OHMYGOD! I know EXACTLY what you are talking about!! I hate bugs, any kind, any size. I. HATE. THEM. I. FEAR. THEM. Irrational? Why, yes, very, but true nonetheless.

SO, I am lying in bed with the hubby, bullshiting, when I say, "Gee, my arm feels so itchy." I scratch. I keep itching. I bring my arm up to find out what the deal is and there is a HUGE BLACK WATERBUG (no kidding as big as my thumb) CRAWLING ON MY ARM. I screech, literally jumped 5 feet in the air, hit that bug off me so hard I slammed my hand into the bedroom wall and brusied it AND left a whole in the wall. Hubby valiantly killed said bug and flushed him down the toilet (not once, but twice) and I left a sobbing, hiccuping message on my exterminators answering machine at 12:00 a.m. Needless to say, I did not sleep in the bedroom for two weeks after that, I BOILED the sheets (king size so this was not easy) and I am still (after almost 4 years) prone to jumping up in the middle of the night, turning on the light and inspecting the bed, sheets and myself at the slightest inclination of an itch.

I need therapy.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Aggggh! Bugs!

No one told me about Austin before I came here. No one told me there are... to use their 'cute' name - Tree Roaches. Ok, so that's not all that cute, but it's better than what they are, being,

"The big huge 6 inch long roaches that are just waiting for me to go ahead, just go ahead and TRY stepping on one so it can flip over, grab me in all 9 million feet, yank me to the ground and lick my face."

I hate them. I hate them. I hate that they're just waiting outside my house for me. And I hate that the second day I lived in the house, I got up, sleepily pulled back the shower curtain in the bathroom, and there one was - just waiting for me to innocently step naked into the shower so it could... ewwwww. Six months and I still wince when I reach for the shower in the morning.

Ugh.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

One time when I was six and I was visiting my aunt in Michigan, my parents took me roller skating a little outdoor rink near the beach. They dropped me off and I was free to skate by myself for hours with no parental supervision. However, I couldn't skate. So I clung desperately to the side of the rink until I had enough guts to skate to the middle. I thought I was getting the hang of it until I started falling and went to grab the railing on the side, slipped and opened my mouth and went face first into the rail, and an entire spider web (and spiders and prey) went into my mouth.

I stopped skating after that and sat out front to wait for my parents.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

No big buggy experiences in real life, but that scene in the second Indiana Jones movie where he has to reach into the hole packed with crawling bugs just about made me run screaming from the theater. Ish.

My wife and I were driving to Houston from San Francisco for an SCA event. She wanted to stop and see one of those saguaro cacti up close, so we waited until we spotted one within spitting distance from the freeway, stopped, got out, and woke up a rattlesnake.

We backed off, got back into the car, and broke out in nervous laughter. "We drive through 1,000 miles of desert, stop once, and there's a rattlesnake." Next time, we're flying.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Bug stories. Oh, God.

When I first started dating my ex-husband, we visited his family in rural Pennsylvania. They live in the serious sticks and all sorts of extraneous wildlife makes appearances at odd times. Crickets tend to get in the house regularly - I know, they don't bite or anything, but....ick. Anyway, I'm sitting in the living room with the ex's parents and my ex returns to the room with his hand behind his back. He gives me the old "close your eyes and hold out your hand," and, like a bleedin' idiot, I do it. I open my eyes and there's a HUGE, BLACK, ICKY CRICKET in my hand. I swear, the thing was immense. I jumped, screamed and dropped the damn thing like any normal person would do in this situation. I thought my ex and his folks would die laughing at the city girl. The story came up at family gatherings for years.

More recently, I was watching "The Mummy" at home (I know, it's a stupid movie. Shut up.) and there was this scene where all these horrible scarab beetles are running all over the place. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw this big black beetle walking across my carpet. I jumped a foot, then ran for the flyswatter and sent that nasty critter back to its maker. I spent the rest of the movie with my feet OFF the floor, thank you very much.

And don't even get me started about the "firebrats" we have here in southeastern PA. They're a couple of inches long and skinny, and have about a gajillion legs, and exist for the sole purpose of giving me the worst creeps I've ever had.

I hate bugs.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I once stood on a slug in bare feet (in the dark) - it kind of schooshed up between my toes, but I had to wait til I got back to the house before I could inspect the damage.

I thought that was unpleasant, but rollerskating-E? Your spider web story has me clamping my jaws shut and shivering. Erurghhhhh...

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I don't really mind bugs that much, as long as they don't startle me when I'm not expecting them. And spiders, spiders are good, because they eat the other bugs (however, spiders must still make a rapid exit from my apartment when I find them--I don't kill 'em, but they must relocate).

My only big bug phobia involves coming across insects in your food. Even worse is coming across half-eaten insects in your food. Several years ago, my roommate at the time and I were sitting on a couch in the living room, watching a movie. Christine was eating an apple or some other crunchy-type fruit that you bite into, and in the middle of a really quiet and intense moment of the film, she let out this ear-piercing shriek and started making these really strange gargling noises in her throat.

When she waved the partially-eaten apple at me and I saw the little cave the worm had created for itself, and only the tail end of the worm, I started spitting and gagging right along with her.

I don't think she's eaten fruit of any kind since then.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

The absolute worse experience I had was a catapiller (think fat wooly catapiller) between my breasts as I was driving down the highway, I thought it was an itch I looked down and started shrieking, I squished it and got it all over me. That had to be the longest ride home I ever had. Yuck.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Every now and then there is a surge in the population of a certain insect due to various environmental and biological factors. One year, here in Central Texas, there was a swarm of caterpillars. For several months in my neighborhood there were these 1-2 inch long grey/black things with yellow and white stripes. Millions of them. Hanging from trees, migrating in herds across the pavement. When you drove your tires inevitably became messy with purple goo. The surviving caterpillars wove tiny yellow/white cotton-like coccoons in every conceivable nook and cranny.

I have a fear of flying stinging insects. Wasps, hornets, bees, yellow jackets: I hate them all very much. While backpacking one time I came to a place that I decisively renamed "Wasp Canyon". They were everywhere. A woman I came across said that "if you point at 'em, they'll go away." I began madly pointing at any flicker of movement. All of the wasps laughed at me.

I was once picking blackberries in a field when I stumbled upon what looked to be a beautiful lizard with various shades of green. It was at my feet, slightly obscured by a bush. Very carefully and slowly I bent down to examine the creature. Further inspection revealed that while it was a reptile, it was no lizard. Rather, it was a diamondback rattlesnake. When I realized I was a couple of feet from a rattlesnake that, by all appearances, was poised to strike I became very still. The snake looked at me. I looked at the snake. Neither of us made a sound, which calls into question the effectiveness of this particular snake's rattle. Perhaps it was wiggling its little rattle- less tail with considerable effort; I'll never know. I decided at that moment to jump backwards and upwards as hard as I possibly could. The rattlesnake simultaneously moved to strike, sending its terrible fangs directly between my legs as I flew backwards from my launch. I lost all of my blackberries.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, ew, EEEEWWWWWWW! All these bug stories are completely freaking me out.

I was once held captive in about 3 square inches of my apartment by a water bug that REFUSED TO DIE! I smashed it with my shoe, I beat it with a frying pan, I threw every moveable object within arms reach directly onto it's pointy little feelers and still it continued to live. When I tried to inch past it and escape for help it turned on me with diabolical accuracy, lifted it's wings and flew directly onto my head. After beating it off me in an adrenaline powered frenzy and sustaining what I can only imagine was the equivalent of a near-death experience induced by a heart attack, I ran screaming into my hallway and refused to return until my super had agreed to dispose of it.

Oh Pamie, I feel for you.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Spider nightmare #1: I am a little kid in my bedroom, reading on my bed, minding my own business. I reach over to the nightstand to get my cup of nice, cold, refreshing milk, and see just before I grab the handle that there is an ENORMOUS spider on the cup!!! It was one of those really tall ones, like if he flattened out in a circle he would have been as big as a silver dollar. I screamed, he jumped. And jumped. And fucking JUMPED! He jumped onto the floor, hopped around a couple of times and then hopped right under my bed. Who knew there were jumping spiders? Not me, and I would just as soon never have found out, because yuk!! I ran out of the room screaming my head off, and waited until my dad got home so he could find it and kill it for me (my mother refused to check it out herself-she just closed the door and stuffed a towel in the crack so the little critter couldn't escape). Dad never found it, and I slept on the sofa for 2 weeks until I was sure the Hopalong Cassidy'd had time to jump off into the sunset.

Bug nightmare #2: I'm a teenager, sitting on our screened in porch, reading a book (do you suppose it was the books that atrracted them?), once again minding my own business. I had on shorts and would occassionally feel a little itch or tingle on my legs, which always ended up being nothing, I finally told myself to stop being an idiot and just ignore the little tingles and concentrate on the book instead. It worked for a while, until one tingle in particular felt heavy, and seemed to be moving up my thigh. I looked. Saw huge black spider looking dead at me, heading towards me with blood in his eye. He died quickly, but not without fanfare. Our next door neighbor actually came outside to see if someone was being murdered at our house, the screaming was that hysterical. Ever since, I investigate every itch and tingle, no matter how small.

Bug nightmare #3: Driving to a baby shower, takes an hour to get there. Notice early in the trip a white albino spider on the sun visor in front of my face. Loud screams, much swerving on highway. Control regained, deal is struck between me and spider: "I promise not to drive off a cliff and kill us both if you promise not to come any closer to me. I will set you free (if you call being dead 'free') when I am safely parked." Spider did not keep it's end of bargain, and traveled around to the left, passed side window and disappeared towards the back of the car. Once safely parked, I searched but could not locate spider anywhere. Went inside, gave gifts, ate cake, drank punch, etc. Got back into car, after checking again for 8-legged albino freak with no luck, and drove an hour home. Once safe in my own kitchen, I start to tell the tale of The Spider and Me to my husband. As I am talking,I turn to get a glass out of the cabinet, because all the sweating I had done over the spider's whereabouts had dehydrated me. Husband smacks me on the back of the head, hard. I whip around to ask what the hell that was all about and he said that he watched a white spot appear in the back of my hair that got bigger and bigger, and finally surfaced completely to reveal itself as my tiny white nemesis. The fucker had been in my hair!!! Not on my hair, but completely hidden IN IT!!! For a long fucking time!!! That was 3 years ago and I still can't think about it without shuddering and feeling all creepy-itchy. My husband is my hero. I truly believe he saved my life, because if I had found that thing in my hair myself, I'm sure I would have dropped dead of a heart attack.

Pamie, I feel for you. I hope you are now insect-free.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

When I was a kid, my room used to get all crawling with daddylonglegs in the summer. I hated them, I feared them.

I couldn't even sleep at night unless I'd gone around with the can of Raid and exterminated every one I could find. Probably a big part of why I'm a mutant now.. Breathing Raid vapors for ten years.

Ugh... I can't stand bugs. But this is true: I went to a weird middle/high school. Our mascot (despite the fact we had no teams) was officially the Steller's Blue Jay (which is a huge, bad-ass jay... really), but the real mascot was the silverfish. I learned to peacefully co-exist, as long as they didn't crawl on me.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Just to give you the big Picture, I am about 5'11" and a robust but not porky 250 lbs. I worked for years as a jail gaurd in a super max facility with murderers and rapists and all the lowest of low, meanest and most dangerous beings you can imagine. I have been in one on one physical fights with the above mentioned losers and remain both undefeated and alive. But last summer as I drove down a narrow alley with my window open, I brushed by a small tree. Something landed on my shorts clad legs and I looked down to see all one and a half inches of fuzzy white caterpillar walking along my upper thight. Well I smacked at it so wildly and hard that I now have to think about adopting children, I swerved all over the alley brutally killing two garbage cans, a bag of grass clippings, an old doghouse (no dog inside thankfully ) a bundle of tree prunings and to my horror a six foot section of picket fence. When I explained what happened to the older gentleman to whom the fence belonged to, He said with a strait face "Dam caterpillars"

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

This isn't my story, but my friend J. probably won't read this today, so I'm sharing hers because to this day it freaks my shit.

She was just a kid and getting ready for bed. The weather had changed and it had gotten colder so her mother pulled her nightgown out of the dresser drawer and pulled it over J's head and started getting ready for bed. Little J. starts whimpering. The mom looks over and sees her baby daughter covered head to toe in scorpions.

She ripped the nightgown off her daughter, but they were all over her body. A mother scorpion had her babies inside the nightgown in the drawer. They threw J. in the bathtub and tried to wash them off, and she was getting covered in stings.

They take her to the hospital. As they carry her in the doctor asks what's wrong. One scorpion crawls out of J's hair and into her eye.

They took her without further questioning.

That story has kept me up nights and has made me a firm believer in always washing last season's storage clothes before you go and wear them.

ew, i'm all creeped out.

j., if you're reading, feel free to fill in parts i might have missed. it's creepier when you tell it.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Two legs, no prob. Eight legs, no problem. It's those damn six legs!!!!

Bugs I don't mind, I think lady bugs and June Bugs are cute (unless they hit your hair), kind like watching ants and grasshoppers and stuff. BUT I HATE SPIDERS!!!!

EWWW EWWW UGGGHH YIKES!!! GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!!!!!

And then an hour and a half of random shivers and skill crawls. Yuck. When I was a kid I was even afraid to smush them, thought they might leap up at the last second and bite me. This is what you get for giving your kid a set of encyclopedias and letting him read about all the poisonious spiders.....

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Okay, I'm not terribly icked out by bugs, but the most hilarious thing to me is my sister's arachnophobia. She lives in Oregon and there are very interesting spiders like flourescent orange ones that love her apartment. So, she's an arachnaphobe, but doesn't like killing them. This necessitates a little "compromise" with her and the spiders, since there are always spiders in her apartment. Everytime she comes home, she opens her door and says, "Okay spiders, I'm home. You better hide or I'm gonna kill you." Oddly enough, it seems to work.

My ick out with bugs is those awful little bugs that live in basements with the prong tails (are those earwigs?). I'm six feet tall and turn into an icked-out shivering mass if I see one and after I've killed it, I get total creeps because I had to be near it! I gotta go now, I've freaked myself out.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Ah....remember the fun of summer camp? The illicit kissing and underage drinking and all round fun? Remember how uncomfortable those summer camp bunks were, and how you assumed that it was just because they had been flattened by generations of sleeping campers?

Well, what if they were rustly and lumpy and impossible to sleep on because they were filled with thousands of bug cocoons. Now imagine what happens when you put a warm, human body on a mattress filled with bug cocoons!

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I'd just like to thank all of you. Every square centimeter of skin on my body is absolutely CRAWLING right now. If I scratch any more, my cube neighbors are going to think I have fleas....

Which reminds me, a friend of mine actually HAD fleas. I've never teased anyone so mercilessly in my life. Probably never will again.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

OK, firebrats no longer give me the worst creeps I've ever had. Pamie's story about the scorpions on her friend just did it. I think I need a drink...

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Okay, picture this: an eleven-year-old girl and her five-year-old brother. It's been raining, and a big ditch outside the aforementioned kids' house is filled with water. Naturally, when the rain stops, they run outside and jump in the ditch.

Joy. Splashing. Wet hair. Giggles.

It starts to rain again. They head towards the house. Halfway up the driveway, the girl looks over at her brother and sees a HUGE black spot that covers his ENTIRE shoulder. She moves closer.

It's a spider.

Terror. Shrieking. Running. Stumbles. Shriek-and-run combo.

The spider [a tarantula -- one of the joys of New Mexico] was wiped off behind the porch by Mommy Dearest. Neither of us would so much as step foot on the porch for MONTHS. I was scarred for life, really. *shudder*

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Okay, so maybe my sister isn't so silly for talking to spiders on the way into her house. I'm completely shivering from the different stories. The bed one and the scorpion ones got me. Thanks everyone,

Icked out -jen

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Scorpions....OMG!!!!!

My aunt and uncle have this kick ass house at Lake Texoma...when I was about 15, my cousin and I decided to sleep in the sun room. I get all snuggled in the hide-a-bed and oh my fricken gawd!!!! I was screaming...I woke up everybody in the house....a little tiny scorpion was stinging the shit out of me. Everyone kept saying "be still, be still". I mean you fucking be still when something's stinging you all over.

Oh damn, that hurt. I was high on benadryl for like a week after that.

A few years ago we went skiing in Colorado, we were driving near the Royal Gorge or whatever.....anyway.....there were several cars stopped on the side of the road. The people were feeding deer! It was soooo cool. I made my boyfriend stop so we could feed them, too. All we had were chips and chex mix. Quite a treat for those little deer. There were probably 20 or so deer.....they would let you pet them and everything. CUTE!

So my boyfriend and another guy started bitchin'.....so we got back in the car and a few minutes later, I feel something crawling on my arm....it's a fucking TICK!! I instantly started feeling all the symptoms of Lyme disease! I was flipping out. So Brad pulls over and I'm covered in ticks. I couldn't imagine where they came from. Yeah, yeah, yeah....DUH!!! I shucked my clothes right there, I wanted those suckers gone. I wouldn't get in the car until they made sure none of them had any ticks left on them. All the way home, I kept thinking that they were in my hair. That was a long 12 hours, lemme tell ya. I hate deer.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I don't really mind bugs except praying mantises and wasps -- bad news since I'm a gardener and all. I don't kill them (although we do have a yellow jacket trap), but I try to avoid them.

Otherwise, I'm cool with the bugs. They don't bug me and I don't bug them. (Heh. "Bug me." I kill me.)

My dog eats June bugs. It's a little gross to watch, but it really cuts down on the June bug population, because he can catch about a hundred of them in an hour. Of course, we have so many of them that he can stand in one place and catch a hundred of them in an hour. I hate them, too.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

HMM- all these monthsof reading and never wanting to join in because I don't know any good stories... When I was 8 I went to the dentist to get my teeth x-rayed. It was about 1985 so the dental (X-ray girl? technician?) had REALLY big hair. Yeah we all had it, but hers was big. So she puts that hard plastic thingy in my mouth, and i lookup and notice a huge spider crawling ON TOP of her hair. She must have noticed how scared I looked because she started saying how easy it was and blah blah blah. I started to wimper because that spider was really big, so she started to swat at her hair. the spider flew in my mouth IN MY MOUTH DEAR GOD MY MOUTH. so now, not only did I have a hard plastic thing proping my mouth open, but a spider crawling in me. I puked on the table, the girl, and myself. I think my mom had to slap me to make stop screaming. It took about two years before i went back to the dentist.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I never should have told that story. I just answered the door and a spider dangling from the doorway hit me in the face. They've been looking for years and now that they found me they will get revenge because I swallowed and puked their friend. Dear God.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

My friend Lora and I were about 16 when we decided to go on a hike behind her house. Living in Colorado, in the mountains, this meant that we were planning on a three or four hour hike. We got about halfway up the mountian, and decided to sit down to drink some water and just take a break. Well, there we were, sitting unsuspecting, when I looked over at her and noticed a tick crawling up her shirt. I told her about it, and she flicked it off. Then she notices one crawling up my arm. A little nervous laughter ensues as I flicked that one off. Then I notice two more on her, as she simutaniously noticed three on me. At this point panic begins to take over. We both leapt up from where we were sitting and took a quick look at our own bodies and one another's backs, and realized we were both literally crawling with ticks. As you may know, 16 year old girl panic is different than any other kind of panic in the world. We both raced screaming and weeping down the mountain. When we got to her house, her mom thought someone had tried to kill us on the mountainside. She was even more surprised when we both made a beeline for the bathroom and stripped down completely naked. During the next hour, we picked literally hundreds of ticks off each other. I think I had something like 120 ticks on me and she had close to 200. Errgh... Still creeps me out.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Bugs #1 - After an eight-hour flight turned into a twenty-hour flight from Baltimore to Amsterdam, and then the train into town, and then the cab to the hotel, literally collapsed into bed in the Hotel Rokin around 4am only to wake up a few minutes later itching from head to toe with itching turning into a low-grade stinging sensation. Turn on the lights, find eye glasses, look closely at white bed sheet: crawling with extremely miniature black specks. Lice? Bed bugs? Who knows. Find clothes. Irate stomp to the front desk. Awaken night clerk. Doesn't speak English. Sign language for bugs in bed and scratching bites from head to toe. He finally gets it, acknowledges with a smile, reaches under counter and hands over ancient can of some kind of World War II era bug spray. Ten minutes more of sign language to determine whether the spray is to be used upon me or upon the bed. Never determined. Sprayed both. Thoroughly. Twenty years from now when I'm diagnosed with some environmentally related skin or lung disease, I'm suing that Dutch bastard.

Bugs #2 - Manhattan, 1996. Mid-town. Corner of the street lunch cart. Turkey on whole wheat. Two or three bites into the sandwich, a cockroach tucked between the lettuce and the tomato. Sandwich goes airborne.

Bugs #3 - No names mentioned because the statue of limitations may still be in effect. At a well known university in a well known town in a state known for basketball championships, a group of Hoosiers who will remain unidentified purchased from a biological supply house that will remain unnamed several large cases of live crickets. Crickets live for an exact length of time under appropriate conditions, i.e. temperature. Otherwise, they go legs up - but not until they've found an appropriate place to hang out and then die. Like elephants traveling to the bone yards. So theoretically, cases and cases of crickets released in oh, say, a dormitory complex, like say, oh, on a Friday night in the Spring, will have more than enough time to spread throughout the entire complex and into drawers and sweaters and closets and such before the ambient temperature drops and they are then recategorized from being "crickets" into being "deceased crickets." Nasty, nasty, nasty clean-up situation, considering how much dead crickets look exactly like cockroaches, which is another dorm problem every student learns to live with. But the clean-up wasn't nearly as annoying as the non-stop chirping for two nights before they all died. Moral: kegs and kegs of beer, idle hands, and insects are a dangerous combination. (PS - Did I mention that this was the freshman girl's dorm?)

http://www.mediacity.com/~dwinslow/uppdate.html

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

More scorpion stories... well actually one... yeesh...

My family had just moved into a new house, and all the windows in my bedroom were not of average size - we were having curtains made for them.. so the first night in the new house, I wake up to go potty, and the only light in the room is from the street light outside my window... so I start to step off my bed on the right side.. and there's a movement on the floor, so, I turned on my bedside light and there's a scorpion sitting there with his tail up.. ready to ... yikes!.. so I go to get off the other side of the bed.. and there's a scorpion on that side... shit!... so I go to crawl off the end, and .. well you guessed it, another one... so, being the brave creature that I am (ahem) I leapt off the end of the bed, and landed at the bathroom door.. as I was reaching in to turn on the bathroom light, I saw the spots on the tile start to move... yes folks.. more scorpions!.. I screamed.. I may have passed out.. I just remember that my mom & I were both on my bed screeching at the top of our lungs, and my dad and bro were beating the shit out of about 15 scorpions! I literally sprayed my entire mattress with bug spray before I would get back in... the Terminex guy was there the next day.. and no more scorpions!...

OH, and my mom was stung by a scorpion when she was pregnant with me, and I have a strange shaped birthmark on my right foot... yep!.. it looks like a scorpion! (begin eerie music.....)

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

This is so freaky. I sent e-mail to an online friend just a few hours ago about bugs. She was talking about bug stuff in her journal and sent me on a link to Xeneybeth's Australian memoirs and, well, I was spurred into rememberign things best left forgotten. Before I supress the trauma and the memories again, here goes: "First of all...AAAAAAAH! Anything described like this has to be Bad-Mm'kay indeed: "They're the size of a coffee cup and hairy, like a tarantula. They crawl around on ceilings and drop without warning onto your head or your bed or your lap. They're harmless but you can't squish them because they're so big."

My GOD! DROPS on you?! HAIRY? "Hunts MAN"?! YI!That is Not Good[tm].

That description right there would stop me in my tracks. You're pretty brave to go look for MORE spiders. (I'm glad I looked at your link first, because the pictures on the screen are scary, but they are wee and manageable and, well, flat. I read Xeneybeth's entry and had the mental movie going and freaked out totally. EEEEEEEEEERGH!!)

I'm not even that much of a pussy when it comes to dealing with spiders, but I AM scared of 'em and our house DOES have unwelcome visitors.

I'm with you, I like daddy and granddaddy longlegs. They are supposedly more venomous than many other true spiders BUT we humans don't have to worry about it. Since the fangs of these spiders are too small to penetrate the skin, it is not considered a dangerous spider. Woo hoo!

I'd pick them up and examine them all the time when I was small. They're cool and kind of friendly-looking. I still pick them up and throw them outside rather than squish them (of course). ([They nosh on black widows and] We don't have a huge black widow problem in our house.)

I'd pick up bees too. I've never been bitten or stung by anything, amazingly enough.

Truth is, as far as bug removal goes, I hate squishing things. But there are exceptions.

Spiders are Not Allowed in my bed or near my bed. They will get sprayed if I can't reach them to smite them or they will be squashed if I can.

I was in the tub two days ago and a spider the size of a jellybean hopped in with me. AAAAH!

I went blank, but I know my usual reaction to danger is to freeze, then move slowly away, then flee at high velocity. So I got out of the tub and ricocheted off the walls, because my bathroom is tiny. Ow.

Then I killed the spider. I'd rather not have, but it was her or me...and I had soap on my hair and it was 50 degrees outside and I was nekkid. You gotta do what ya gotta do.

Spiders of Uncommon Size skeeve me to the point of immobility. The only way I can deal with them is to realize I like my sleep and knowing a Spider of Uncommon Size is alive and well in my room will ruin any chance of me sleeping.

I have an honest-to-god Roach Phobia but, for the same reason stated above, I'll kill the bastards if I'm the only human in the house.

I have scary roach and frightening cottonmouth snake stories.

WARNING: do not read the rest if you are eating.

Where I'm from, we have palmetto bugs, which are the same flying black roaches you referenced in your journal. They SUCK. They are up to 4 inches long and an inch wide. They FLY. They are attracted to light-colored objects. I am blonde and pale skinned. You do the math.

I'm terrified of them. My brother mastered cheerful passivity as a way to get out of chores and my mother would be at the boiling point after asking him to take out the trash a dozen times only to be met with "Sure mom!", "Right away, mom!", "You bet, mom, I'm on it!" but *no actual trash removal*. So she'd be all pissed and torqued off and then she'd pounce on me and make me do it when I walked through the room. I'd beg off, because I'd have to go to the Dumpster of Dread. Where the flying Huge Roaches of Doom lived. Mind you, they're bad enough if you're just repulsed. When you have a phobia of something, you believe in your heart it will kill you or harm you seriously. Logic has nothing to do with it. My mother was and is a singularly unsympathetic woman, though, and thought I was malingering just to get out of touching trash. Which was partially true, of course, as I didn't like touching trash much less carrying it, especially since it wasn't my 'duty' but my brother's. So I'd drag my feet to the dumpster and then, from as far away as possible, I'd fling the bag of trash in its general direction and run away. I was never good at sport, so sometimes I failed and sometimes someone took it upon themselves to close the dumpster lid, but generally I'd pitch it in. And this CLOUD of flying roaches would explode out of the dumpster and I'd run away convinced there was a battalion of them chasing me home. I nearly ran out into traffic to get away from them. They are awful.

And on rare occasions, they WOULD land on me and I'd go apeshit. I'm squirming as I type.

There were some isolated incidents throughout the years, because where I live *no matter how houseproud your family is*, roaches can get in (and then live off of things like the mucilage on the back of a postage stamp and they can do it for eight days or more without water).

I woke up one 110o summer night because I thought someone had jammed a pin into my toe. Oh no. I had a visitor. My toe was dinner. I went insane and kicked the thing into a rotary fan, where it pinged around like a pachinko ball but LIVED. I then tried mashing it with a sneaker but the rug was too thick. Ended up hairspraying it to death, which is a fine method, as you can stand four feet away and aim and they suffocate and die without you touching them. You have a sticky mess to clean up, but you don't have to actually crush the roach yourself.

*SHUDDER*

Next story. We had filthy neighbors and my mother was doing spring cleaning. I was upstairs watching Jacques Coustea and Yellow Submarine on the TV (switching back and forth when commercials came on, and this was back when our TVs had no remotes). I hear my mother make a funny sound and then the vaccuum cleaner started up and it sounded like she was vaccuming up dried black eyed peas or something. Stupidly, I went to investigate. Our filthy neighbors apaprently had roaches, and we shared a wall with them, and the construction between the underside of their sink area and ours was slipshod. There were huge gaping Holland Roach Tunnels, apparently, for when my mother had innocently opened a 20 year old fondue pot wedding present thing (thinking she might want to use it one decade), there in the paper padding, little brown nasty German cockroaches had built an entire colony. She'd found a NEST. Of course she dropped the fondue set, which was unfortunate because they all came out at once. Hence the pea-rattling noises in the vacuum hose. So we were both standing on chairs in the kitchen shrieking as this tide of roaches came out of this little fondue box. It was AWFUL. I know I was forced to take the vacuum bag full of them and fling it into the Dumpster of Dread, but I blacked most of that experience out, thankfully.

The root of my phobia is a newspaper article I read at age 4 or 5. I was a bit advanced, and would read the paper cover to cover, as I'd read everything else at my level in the house and most newspapers are written for people with a 10 year old's mentality. I read obituaries from time to time, and as Savannah is rather small, they would sometimes go into some detail. This was during the summer, and we get weather over the 120o F mark sometimes. Each summer we lose some elderly folks and young children who refuse to use A/C, can't afford to use A/C, get stuck in a place without A/C or simply don't HAVE A/C. It's a tragedy and they are more and more aware of it and active about preventing it. They have the "don't leave your dog in the car" PSAs and they finally clued that SOME people had to have everything spelled out for them (i.e., if you couldn't leave a dog in the car, a human child in the car was probably also a bad idea) so they also have 'don't leave your kid in the car' PSAs too.

Let me make this as brief as possible, because there's no way to get beyond the gross bits.

An elderly woman died from the heat. The coroner was quoted that he estimated the time of death to be about a week before she was found by neighbors. He also added the superfluous information that the roaches had gotten to her two weeks prior. In other words, that poor, poor woman was not only hot and miserable, she had CARNIVOROUS FLYING BUGS ON HER FOR A WEEK before she died.

THAT is where my phobia comes from. I think it's perfectly reasonable, under the circumstances. I've been told never to watch "Damnation Alley". Unfortunately, no one warned me about a certain Twilight Zone episode, where the clean freak wages war on roaches only to...I can't go there. It's awful.

Anyway, I am so there with you. Spiders and bugs are SCARY. I don't like them. You can call me a wuss if you must, but that's how it is."

There you go. Synchronicity in action. Somewhere RIGHT NOW another diarist is writing about bugs. I swear you people mind-meld!

Anyway. There you go. The funny ant story will have to wait for another day.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

When I was in high school, I was a hard rocker. These were the lite metal days of the late 80s and I was never without my three-day growth of Kip Winger stubble. My hair was about down to the middle of my back.

Anyone with long hair knows what it's like to have a few split ends tangle up into a little Gordian knot while you're brushing... They break off, and you end up with these little mini Koosh balls in your brush. I was brushing one day after a shower, and saw one of those in my ear, and thought, "Hmmm, that looks like a spider." I casually flicked it out of my ear... And it crawled down my cheek. "It IS a spider!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs, and nearly demolished a blowdryer while using it to smash the hapless little arachnid against the counter.

This may sound like a really awful hygiene problem, but, in fact, the problem was that the spiders would crawl into the dryer vent, which opened into the garage, and stow away in whatever dry towels were waiting there to be folded. I mightn't have been so freaked out by my little ear Koosh except for the occurrence of only two weeks ago: I had just turned off the shower and dried myself when I noticed a movement on my, er, unit that at first looked like moving pubic hair and turned out to be a little brown spider. Nothing is so ferociously gentle as a man trying to quickly remove a creepy crawly from his genitals without causing himself some serious pain.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Oh god! I also told a snake story today. This is getting weird. "We had a storm run-off creek behind our house when we briefly moved to Augusta. It was fun to play in and clean enough to wade in. So wade we did. I went out one day with the goal to trace the creek to its source by walking up it. I was thwarted by thickets in one direction, so went the other and I came to this deep part. The banks along this creek were, in some places, eroded. Tree roots and so forth were exposed. Little did I know that this was prime watersnake nesting territory. I just thought these were interesting to look at and that the banks with tree roots exposed were occasionally handy to use to climb out of the water when the rest of the sides were too high or delicate to use.

I was blithely wading along and the water got deeper and deeper until I was holding my short hems up and tiptoeing. I idly looked down and saw what looked like a branch or two in the water. No big deal, branches and shit fell in the water all the time. However, these branches looked like they were undulating. An optical illusion, I figured. Until one REALLY moved. I was a foot away from an ENORMOUS cottonmouth (a.k.a. a water mocassin). *SHRIEK*

I froze. Luckily, "make like a tree" was always my default plan when confronted with things that might bite.

The snake came up and investigated and I rediscovered my religion in a hurry. It swam idly between my legs and then decided I wasn't interesting after all and went away. However, that left me in the middle of water I couldn't run out of (too deep, too many things on bottom, too many SNAKES!) and surrounded on both sides by snake nests in the banks. AIEE!

I waded sloooooowly out and you best believe I never went back up the creek that far again.

Generally I like snakes fine, and can handle them and play with them and all. My cousins had snakes and I'd wear them and play with them. We had snakes in high school and there was one little grass snake that we called Lymon because he was green and yellow. He'd coil like a bracelet on your arm.

So snakes in general I have no issues with. Snakes that can kill you are another things entirely."

Also had run-ins with snakes in blackberry patches, but generally they weren't bitey snakes. I figured they could have some fruit, I could have some, we'd share. Snakes seemed to be at peace with the concept and I was careful where I walked.

I regularly came across blue-tailed skinks (what a great word) which were weird looking lizard things. We were told they bit and were poisonous, which was probably a lie. They did lose their tails because the neighborhood boys would bother them. Skinks and I peacefully co-existed. I'd catch little brown/green lizards 9the ones that aren't chameleons but change color) and usually was gentle enough that they didn't split their tail off. I found them fascianting. They found me to be a pain in the ass. "Oh god, that girl picked me up again. Shit. My cover is busted. How can she see me when I'm invisible, man? *lizardy little sigh of exasperation* Better check and see if my chamoflage is actually working when I get back to Lizard Lair central. Maybe I'll nip her finger. Yeah, that's how I wanna play it. Fuck you, put me down. Damn!"

Crickets: black crickets = Cute & Good. The cricket in Mulan = good cricket.
Camelback brown humpy scary roach-shaped crickets = BAD. Make Milla wet self. Much fear of brown camel-back humpy crickets. Grasshopper in Bug's Life = cousin of scary brown crickets. Him bad. No like.

Pill bugs or roly-polies are Good bugs. I like ladybugs too. That's about it for my ability to tolerate beetle-like creatures.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Pamie,

Ah, yes, the bugs of Austin. I lived there in the late '80s. One morning I woke up with a scorpion in my hair.

Thanks for the memories. Yeesh!

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

Whoops! I meant the late '70s. You see how traumatized I still am?

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I don't have a bug story, I just wanted to say, in response to all the bug stories I just read, especially Pamie's scorpion story and Kristen's beetle-infested mattress story:

[bad language follows]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! JESUS CHRIST!! JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IN A MOTORCYCLE WITH MARY IN THE SIDECAR! HOLY SHIT! HOLY FUCKING SHIT! My whole body is itching from the sheer power of suggestion, and I will never ever ever be able to trust the shower, the tub, the toilet, or in fact the entire outdoors, EVER AGAIN.

I love you guys.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

A friend told me a story once that I will never forget. Apparently he fell asleep on someone's porch after a long night out. He woke up a few times because his ear was hurting, but he didn't think anything was wrong. The next morning he got up and was on his way home when his ear started hurting extremely bad...until the beetle crawled out of it. He claims he wasn't scared or freaked out, but he wrecked the car. The other night I walked out of my back door to smoke and felt something cold on the back of my leg. I looked down and what did I see?? a slug... I can only guess that it was crawling up the wall near the door and I brushed against it...who knows?

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I too have had bughead... ants seemed to prefer my moist warm ear canals to their own holes in the ground... my mom thought I was joking about having an earache until i picked my ear with a q-tip (bad girl) and an ant crawled out.

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

In the midst of giving myself the heebie-jeebies reading all these bug stories, I'm confronted with the image of "three day growth of Kip Winger stubble".

Thank you, Shane, for reminding me of all the guys I grew up with in the 80's. I'm not sure which creeps me out more now, spiders and junebugs and scorpions, or this image of Kip Winger that's now stuck in my head. ;)

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I grew up in Texas, with the requisite snakes, spiders, scorpions, and fire ants. I got to be pretty brave about all the creepies and crawlies, but then three years ago I moved to Portland, OR (and then Seattle), breeding grounds for the biggest damn slugs I've ever seen.

Growing up, the biggest slug I'd seen was maybe an inch and a half long. Out here, the slugs would consider one of those guys a midday snack! They don't call them banana slugs for nothing. Slugs like it cool and dark and damp, and the weather out here is perfect for them 8 months out of the year. And I hate them hate them hate them! They've been known to kill joggers -- running along at dawn, step on a slug as long as your foot, skid, wham, sudden skull fractured on the curb or a headlong dive into traffic.

Just last week I walked out on the front porch to get the mail, and when the porch light came on there were dozens upon dozens of slugs slithering across the front steps (good thing I was still wearing shoes!). I proceeded to give my best Mexican Hat Dance impression on the front porch, stomping them all as many times as I could manage before my boyfriend dragged me back in the house. With all my stomping and cursing, I'm sure he wondered whether I'd suddenly developed a bad case of Tourette's.

And then two days ago, as I'm going down to the basement to do a load of laundry, there's one at the bottom of the stairs, oozing and squirming around on the basement floor. I wasn't wearing shoes at the time. I'm just glad I saw it beforehand. The thought of one of those slimy things squishing between my toes... EWW!

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

OK, at first I didn't think I had any bug stories at all, but reading your guys' stories has stoked memories I'd forgotten. 1. Me, 15 years old (about 8 months ago) coming down the stairs after a nice, refreshing shower in which I'd shaved my legs and washed my hair. I was half asleep and going downstairs in order to get my fuzzy Stanford sweats and other pajamaesque articles. I was in my bathrobe, just about to step down on the landing when I saw this yellow-brown thing on the floor, about 6 inches from where I was just going to put my foot. I switched on the light (I have excellent night vision) and there's this SCORPION about 4 inches long with its tail up facing towards me kinda like,"Hey, toots. Got a toe for me?" I froze and slowly backed away--I was actually thinking to myself that if I made any sudden moves the thing would jump on me and start stabing me with that horrible stinger and I would die naked and damp in my red bathrobe. Hell no! I was not going to let that happen, so *leaped* over the thing (Ok, maybe just stepping over it would have done, but what's the point of taking chances?) and went and got Mommy (what did you expect?) and of course, she didn't believe me, just said, "Oh, Andrea!" in this exasperated way. But I showed her, and she started saying, "Boy! That's really neat! Lookattim! Wow!" And then she scooped him--the wicked gleam in its eye was decidedly male--up into a Jiff jar and put him on the table. I wanted to kill it, but my mother wanted to put him back on a hiking trail and maybe give him a bite to eat too! However, the next day I flushed it down the toilet.

Ahhh...is revenge not sweet?

Luckily for me, when I was younger I had an older brother who would smash spiders for me at my beck and call. Those were good times.

2. I'm a girl scout counselor, and one of the things we always tell our girls is that they have to roll their sleeping bags up when they leave in the morning, so creatures don't crawl inside them for catnaps: "If you don't want to share your sleeping bag with Mr. Spider tonight, roll up yer beds!" So, one day, I leave mine out after a particularly hectic morning, and I return 12 hours later to find the miracle of life happening right before my eyes. A mouse had crawled in and was having a litter of the little, pink, slimy babies in the snug confines of my down sleeping bag. Ugh!
I live in Poway, California, which is slightly north of main San Diego, and since its semirural we have black widows (and scorpions). They haven't been too much of a problem, but once I scooped up a ladlefull of dry dog food only to find one scrambling down the side aimed straight for my hand. Well, I promptly dropped the whole thing on the floor and started laying about me with my bare feet until I squashed the thing. And then I had to go wash my foot off. Ugh and double ugh!

3. When I was six, I used to go to the neigbors front yard and trap bees in flowers for fun. Then I would let go and run like hell, squealing. I like to think I've moved on from that. Anyway. One time, I had a particularly fat bumble bee in the big, white bell of the flower and when I let go and ran like a banshee as usual, the thing caught up with me and crawled in my hair. I could hear it buzzing around in there (I had about 2 feet of thick blonde hair at the time, so there was plenty of room) and I ran back to my dad and told him there was a bee in my hair. He looked through it and couldn't find it; you couldn't hear the buzzing anymore. But I knew. I knew the karmatic irony of the situation, so I went inside and started whipping my head up and down and back and forth like Kurt Kobain in "Smells like Teen Spirit." The thing was hurled out of my spinning locks and when it landed I put my brother's tennis shoe on it and told my dad to kill it for me. He scooped it up with a piece of paper and ushered it outside, even though I protested mightily.

4. Another time, I was biking with this very same father of mine, and I was standing on my bike after we had stopped talking to him. There was this large bug tangled up in my eyelashes, but of course I couldn't see it very well, so I thought it was a bee and remained pretty indifferent to it, only blinking a lot because I didn't want it to touch my eye. My dad must have seen the "fly" because he edged nearer and suddenly swiped at my eye, wiping the assailant away. Then he told me there had been a bee in my eye, which was probably the best course of action because I started screaming and clutching myself wildly because I thought I must be being attacked by them.

Give me a break. I was six.

5. One more! Once, when I was twelve, my cousin and I canoed up the Kern river in Michegan. We had just come back after arriving last, and after showering we decided to make chocolate merangues. We were about half way done, and there was melted chocolate on our arms and hands-- pretty much all over the place, come to think of it. I was stooping to retrieve a spoon when I noticed a dab of melted chocolate on my cousin's ankle. I told her and she bent down to wipe it off. It did not wipe off. That was because it was not a dab of melted chocolate, it was an engorged leech. Remaining surprisingly calm, my cousin poured about 4 pounds of salt on the thing until it fell off. Yummy, no?

-- Anonymous, March 24, 2000

I've always had a fear of bees, wasps, horseflies, etc. Practically anything that flies and has a stinger. It just gets to me. I feel like the little devil is planning where to sting me as it inches towards me innocently.

When I was 6 or so, I went to Kentucky to visit my uncle, who lived way out in the country. I was walking around the side of the house just minding my own business when I feel a sharp pain in the back of my head, through my hair. I turn around to see a big, huge, mammoth size bee staring back at me with a grin that says, "Yes, little girl! I did it! Run! Run! I'll catch you! MWA HA HA!"

So I ran, I ran as fast a my little legs could carry me. The whole time I heard the Devil's Spawn buzzing after me. It stung me twice while I was running. The thing did not die after stinging me, it was immortal.

It chased me to the backyard, where my dad had the video camera. He was taping me, thinking that my shrieks of terror were from my brother chasing me. He then saw the bee and the streams of tears down my cheek. He drops the camera and does his best to shield me from the vicious creature. He safely took me to the house while my brother came out with the Raid. I was shaking. I didn't go outside ever again, and even when we had to get in the car to leave, I made my dad carry me.

Bees suck.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

I once was eating a sandwich at a picnic that had a bee on it (much to my eventual surprise). I took a bite. It stung the roof of my mouth. I bit it and then...

squish [must you make me remember this.]

My mouth swelled and my nose clogged. I was rushed to the emergency room for a shot of something.

Years later...

I had a flying ant type thing stuck in the inside corner of my left eye. I dug and prodded but it was stuck half behind where the skin and eyeball meet and half sticking outside. AND IT WAS STILL ALIVE AND CRAWLING TO GET FREE.

YEOOOOOWWWEEEEEEE.

Nasty friggin' memory I don't want to think of.

Years after that...

While mowing a part of the backyard where I grew up, I decided to mow over some tall grass that never had been mowed under a low overhanging shelf to a shed. I did not use a bag to catch the clippings. I ran over a yellow jacket bee's nest. The ones that were not pulverized were pretty pissed to say the least. I got stung a dozen times before I split.

Enough already!!!

Going buggy at The Road Trip

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

34D, eh? AT LAST, I have the answer!!!!! MU-HAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

bugs in general bother me... lady bugs are sposed to be lucky..well if thats the case....im one lucky lady cuz our house is being taken over by them..usuallyt heyjust stay in the bathroom but theyve migrated to the kitchen and living room...they suck!! anyhow bugs arent _too_ bad but im deathly afraid of spiders.. have been since we moved to the country.. where, on the first night of arriving to this lovely old creakyhouse, we camped onthe floor of the living room..

resting soundly i wake up to a feathery feeling on my cheek...make my mom wake up and turn the light on and HUGE ARMY OF BIG BIG SPIDERS big as car tires are bombarding us from a corner!!!!!!

ever since i have been afraid of spiders. and run and jump on something as if they were something really bad.....like mice.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

I don't have a bug story, because if a bug had ever crawled on me I'd be dead by now. But Pamie, you crack me up big time.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

Creepy crawly stories? How about being stalked by a huge, hairy tarantula? I live out in the country, and upon leaving my house a few weeks ago I happened to look down at my shoe, and about 2 inches from my right foot was the ugliest, hariest, biggest spider I have ever seen.

I did the spider dance. You know the half running/jumping shaking that you do when terror strikes you. I got halfway down my driveway and turned around. He was holding up one leg, like he was waving or something. And what is worse, he was between me and my car. I walked around to the passenger side door and crawled in to go to work, hoping that he would be gone when I got home.

He wasn't.

Oh, he just made himself more at home. It was dark when I got back, but I keep a flashlight in the car for emergencies just like this one. I was checking out the ground, satisfied that he was gone, when I started looking at the wall of my house. There he was on the right side of the door, huddled in a crack of the stone exterior. Waiting for me. Now, I know these damn things can jump, so I took my coat, put it over my body, and snuck up on the door while crouching. I know my neighbors probably think that I am bonkers by this time, but I don't give a damn. First, I unlock the door. Then, while keeping an eye on the spider, I open the door with my foot. Then I throw in my purse, kinda as a decoy. Then I dive through the door.

This process went on for about 3 days, when I finally broke down and asked my landlord to move the tarantula. He went out with a broom and swept him off my porch, and when he came back he looked at me weird, said it was a baby and that I should not be scared. A baby! Phsh! That thing could have dragged me off into the woods and made a meal out of me.

The next morning, I leave my house, secure that there will be no more spider problems, and the little bastard is back! This time, he is above my door! Bob (I had to name him, just calling him "the spider" seemed kinda impersonal) just couldn't bear to be apart from me. I finally had to take a waterhose to him, and he hasn't been back since.

And I don't miss him. At all.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

I'd just like to say that I'm currently skimming the entries in a near fetal position, itching-and-scratching violently, and near tears. I hate creepy-crawlies soooooooooooooooooo much. I don't have any great bug stories, found something bizarre in my dresser drawer once and I think it scattered away before I could destroy it and I was freaking out forever about where in my room it was. Also got stung right under my eye when I was 5 or 6 by a still unidentified flying object, my eye was swollen near shut for at least a week. Oh geez I'm going to need a lot of therapy now after reading all these stories.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

I was visiting a friend who works at the local 911 emergency call centre one night when she answered a peculiar call. On the other end of the line was a sreaming crying woman with the sound of two or more sreaming crying children in the background. The panicked woman could barely speek but what we could manage to decipher between the hysterical screams and crying was "send somebody quick", "oh my god", "Help us please", "oh my children", "please please please please", Well my friend being the trained profesional that she is began to trace the call on one computer than lookup the city records to see who pays the bills at that address on another terminal and from the names listed there she looked to see if any occupants had criminal records for violence and then for gun registrations at that address all the while dispatching emergency crews, fire, police, and such to the address. At the same time she is trying to calm the woman down and find out the problem. It takes her a full terror and stress filled five minutes to find out the woman and her three children are trapped in the bathroom standing crowded onto the sink and vanity, the problem is an enormous bug in the bathtub, they don't know if the bug can jump out of the tub so they won't step on the floor. At that precise moment the police ariving at the scene and hearing the screams of the children pleading for help, break down the door and rush in with guns drawn. They find the three children clad in pajamas and a naked woman covering herself with a facecloth standing on a two foot square topped sink/vanity. The brave police men carried the children to safety, covered the 25 year old mother with a blanket and had them all checked out by the ambulance crew while taking into custody a half inch long silverfish from the bathtub. It would have been the funniest thing in the world at the conclusion accept that it was five minutes of pure terror of the un-known that turns your stomach and that was to us trained in the unusual, imagine how traumatized those children were by a mothers unreasonable fear of a tiny silver fish. The recorded call is still around, some laugh when they here it and some are carried by the panic and urgency for five minutes making them sick from the adrenalin rush.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

all i know is bugs are better w/barbeque sauce, first saute w/crisco. lightly salt (some prefer garlic POWDER). baste in bbq sauce. sweet & sour scorpions should be the centerpiece of any bat-mitzvah party. and what coming of age party is better without the manditory worm in the tequilla game? (true story-i,male,teenager,70's;first night in florida;aunt's house;middle of night;horrifying screams;all rush to guest room;my mother,frozen in shock;giant palmetto bug,crawling slowly out of her mouth,across her face.never seen human's eyes bug out so far(not even the lady on tv ads).fire ants(piss ants)suck.fleas suck.love bugs fuck,then die.happy existence.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

oh Pamie.. you just had my worst nightmare. This fear of finding bugs of any kind in my clothes has me either scouring jeans etc before wearing them or sending my 12 yr old son out to get washing from the line. With strict instructions to shake them well before bringing them inside. I don't mind bugs etc as long as their outside and don't surprise me in anyway. I've had a few roach episodes. I was lying in bed when I feel something against my leg. Don't pay much attention at first as I'm prone to 'feeling sensations' BUT when I feel it move up I throw the covers back to reveal a brown roach about 4+ inches long crawling in my bed. Folks that thing hit the wall before it hit the floor. Spent the next 15 mins chasing it around the room before stomping it to oblivion. Another roach: my son and I were watching tv in our new home. He sees something out the corner of his eye and leaps off couch. There on the virtical blinds is another brown roach. this one bigger than bedroom victim. I see it and also leap off couch. We both try to crush it but the damn thing FLIES at us... well at this point brave mum is cowering in kitchen while she instructs son to kill killll KILLLL. He eventually does. Gets hug from mum. *sigh* my hero. We settle down to watch tv again when ANOTHER ROACH appears.... My hero does it again... I was in one entry the mention of Huntsman spiders. I don't know if they live in america or not but they're fairly common in Australia. They are big BIG spiders. Hairy too. Harmless except for the spare factor. How big are they?? Take a man's hand and spread fingers out as far as they will go... That's how big a Huntsman can get. Some are bigger. I have always wanted to visit america but before I do, can someone please give me a list of states and bugs etc that are found in each state. I don't want any surprises. I'll pick the state with least and smallest bugs thanks lol

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

PS: a discription of the bugs in each state would be great too because some of the names I've never heard of. thanks :)

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

My wife named the boa constrictor in her biology lab and tended it every day, so she has no fear of snakes at all. But flying stinging insects? It will send her into a panic. Once a bee flew through an open door window when Barb was driving. We almost bought it then, as she screamed and swerved.

We both hate roaches, but when we learned the sort of acid that will get rid of them without fail, we stopped worrying about them.

--Al of NOVA NOTES.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2000

Ick ick ick! This is so weird! I JUST finished reading your entry, Pamie, and a few of these forum entries. After being thoroughly disgusted, I decided to get my mind off of the bug thing by treating myself to a mug of ice cream, and to settle down and watch the movie I rented. So, when I finished up in the kitchen, I walked out into my living room, ice cream in hand. Two feet directly in front of my face is a BIG ASS spider hanging from the ceiling!! I jumped back in disgust, and stood there waiting for it's next move. The thing saw me, and we were staring at eachother for about a minute. I decided I had to get the thing out, or else I'd be looking back at it the whole night making sure it wasn't making a devious plan of attack. So I went back into the kitchen to put my ice cream down, then came back out to ask if it had any last words. But the bastard decided to crawl up to the ceiling. So I got up on a chair (yes, I needed a chair. I'm only 5'3!) and rolled up some stupid catalogue I got in the mail today, and smacked the bastard down. The thing struggled to get up, but it wasn't going anywhere. So I ran to the kitchen to get a paper towel, and I scooped it up. I could feel it wriggling unerneath the paper towel. I shreiked and writhed over to the garbage and shoved it down as quick as I could. I just washed my hands about eight times.

God I HATE spiders.

Now I feel all dirty, and I freak out at every little tickle. When I came in here to type this, I felt a tickle on my head, and screeched, and writhed and shook my hair out like a mad man. But it was nothing, thank god.

Why do these itty bitty little things creep us out so much??? I dont even want to go back in that room! I suddenly feel like taking a shower.. ;-)

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2000

Bugs...... the dirtiest 4 letter word! I can handle a multitude of bugs, as long as they know THEIR place in the world! I have several stories and don't want to hog the spot light so will try and make them brief.

#1: In the 70's, one evening my grams and pawpaw were walking back from a neighbor's down the road. Pleasant night, soft breeze, so sweet huh???? Well, grams feels a bug on her arm and it is one of the monster roaches of Alabama! She screams and gets it off of her. They continue to walk. She feels something up her dress...... she knew right away it was another one. She takes her dress off right there on the sidewalk. Neighbors got a great show *LOL* Grandpa said he never saw grams strip so fast and he had to stop her from taking off her slip. They got the bug and he asks her if she was gonna put her dress back on. She said "hell no. We are 4 houses away from home and they done seen everything anyway." and walks proudly to her home. She later admitted she was luckier than usual, she normally didn't wear a slip but had gotten back from the store and didn't bother getting comfy right off.

#2: During the beehive and bouffant days, my mother was told a horrifying tale by her best friend who went to do her hair one day. Her best friend witness the taking down of a beehive to have it restyled. Now for those of you who do not know this great legend of hair styles. It used a gallon of hair spray to hold it up. Everyone at the beauty saloon freaked when roaches came out of the hair as it was taken down, and the woman NEVER knew. ewwwwwwwww

#3: I was woken one night to my older sister using the vacuum to suck up large roaches at our grandparents' home... no it wasn't the vacuum... it was her singing "dunt dunt dunt.. another one bites the dust.." *lol* As an adult she has a great fear of all spiders. I think the smaller it is the more she screams, the larger, the more frozen by terror.

#4: As a child I was running barefoot in the yard. I ran through some clovers. I was stung 6 times on one foot and 9 on the other by bees. Of course in my child's mind I couldn't understand why the doctor had to sting me too! I had to get shots to prevent allergic reactions.

#5: My older sister, cousin , and I were playing in our grandparents' back yard years ago. We had been warned not to go near a piece of ply-wood. They had covered a huge ant hill with it while treating it. Of course my sister and cousin didn't listen. They moved the wood to see the ants and then fell into the ant hill and were covered with the ants. We hosed them down and rushed them to the doctor. They were polka dotted for weeks.

#6: My dog attacks the big roaches. This is a good and bad thing. Good because I HATE these things with a passion. I scream from a room and say "kill it kill it kill it". Everyone knows my roach or mouse screams/shrieks. Bad because he plays with them. He attacks them, backs up, pounces on them, bites their legs off, throws them from him and chases after them cause they tried to get away...... he once threw one in my general direction. He now has a habit of showing them to me..... I need a new dog or a good trainer so he will stop that.

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2000

Wow! Lookit all the responses!

Of course, I have to add my own two cents. I have two stories, one cute, one not so cute.

Both stories take place a few years ago when I was still in High School and still living in my parents house.

One night, as I was lying in my bed in the dark, drifting off to sleep I felt a tickle on my foot. Already half asleep, I stretched my foot... and felt something that distinctly didn't feel like sheets. It was soft and furry, in fact.

With a yelp I jumped out of bed, turned on the lights and threw back the covers. There, looking sheepish, was one of my hamsters. Somehow he'd managed to get out of his cage, climb up onto the bed and get under the sheets with me. I have no idea how. I was relieved that it was just a hamster, and he did look cute in an apologetic sort of way, but I was worried that if I'd been truly asleep I might have squished him and never known it.

That's the nice story.

The other story happens in the same place - my bed at my parents house. I was just drifting off to sleep, in that delicious half awake-half asleep state. There was an itch on my leg so I absent- mindedly reached down to scratch it... only to encounter something... cool and clammy that did NOT feel like it was part of me.

INSTANTLY I was awake. I trew back the covers and turned on the lights only to see the biggest, nastiest looking spider on my leg.

Actually. it probably wasn't that big - it was probably just a plain old wolf spider, but it was big enough to inspire a whole symphony of unpleasant emotions. I was frozen between two extremes - the desire to - quick! - get it off my leg and the desire to not move at all lest I annoy it.

Actually this indecision lasted all of about two seconds, but it SEEMED a lot longer, lengthened by terror and disgust. Trying not to think, I reached for a tissue and squshed that baby good.

Oh that shook me up! After I got rid of the spider I c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l- y checked my bed to make sure that there were no more of the little beasties. I then turned out the light and tried to go back to sleep - but the minute I felt an itch or a tickle the lights went back on and I was dancing around trying to shake off imaginary bugs. I must have done that another ten times in my paranoia. I don't think I did get to sleep that night. Brrr. I hate spiders.

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2000

Interesting the amount of people who can't stand spiders. While on a one night stop-over in Fiji, I saw the biggest spider I have *ever* seen.

Two of my friends were staying in the room next to ours, and I was hanging out with them in their room, when they warned me not to go into the bathroom because a spider had taken up residence on the wall.

I, of course, had to go see. It was a big one. And mean looking (of course that could've been from the fact that the bathroom was barely illuminated since there wasn't actually a light in there, the only light came from the sink area outside).

I offered to kill it for the boys, but they told me to leave it alone. I think that was from not wanting to see spider guts on the wall, than from actually wanting it to live. Still, even after a 15 hour flight, guess which two guys didn't shower that night, or in the morning?

I also have an ant story... When I was young, I used to be fascinated by ants. In the backyard of our old place I would watch the ants crawl out of their hole and do their little ant things all the time. But that was before we moved here, and had to deal with occasional ant invasions. Once I had finished a cup of soda, and put it on the table behind me while I watched TV. Less than 30 minutes later I turned around and found the cup (and the table) absolutely CRAWLING with ants. How they found it that fast, I'll never know.

Flyspray is my best friend.

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2000

Okay, I evaluated my hatred for killing spiders and I realized it's because of:

"To Kill A Mockingbird"

I was reading that book for high school sitting on my bed in my room one night, when I saw a very large spider right over my head by my bedroom window. I got up and started hitting the spider with my copy of Harper Lee's classic novel. It was running, and I was jumping on my bed to get it a good whack. Finally it got itself near a corner where the wall met the ceiling, and I shoved the spine of the book in there and squished it. Black and orange goo went all over the corner of the wall and I was too grossed out to do anything about it.

I went back to my book just in time to read "It's bad luck to kill a spider."

That spider goo stayed right over my bed so that every night when I pined away thinking how horrible it was to be in high school I thought about how it was my own damn fault for killing a spider with that particular book.

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2000

I've spent the last two days thinking about bugs, thanks to you guys. The result? Two more bug memories that I thought I'd blocked.

1.) When I was about four years old, my mother and I lived in an itty- bitty one-bedroom house. The bedroom was too small to hold more than one bed, so we slept together. For some reason, we both woke up at the exact same moment one morning at about three. It's a good thing we di9d, too -- the bedspread was moving. Undulating. Waving. Rippling, even. It was quite a bit darker in color than usual,too.

My mom poked it, screeched, and poked it again. "Oh.. my.. GAAAAAWWWWDD!! Sara get out of bed Sara don't move get out of bed Sara MOVE!! No! Don't get up!"

I had no idea what her problem was. I put my hand on the bedspread, intending to smooth it down.

It.. was.. covered.. in.. spiders. Literally HUNDREDS of spiders -- you couldn't see even the tiniest bit of the spread.

I don't remember anything after that. I don't know how we got rid of them. I don't know how I ever got to sleep again in my life. I am pretty sure that I screamed a lot. And I know that we moved that week.

2.) About a month ago, I had a friend over. We were sitting on the floor in the living room, watching TV. "You're sitting on a bug," she said. I ignored her -- I thought she was the TV. [Yes, I am blond.]

"You're sitting on a BUG."

Fuinally, I got it. "Me? Ohmigawd! Where?" I did the bug-dance that so many of you are familar with.

"There, by your foot -- no, your other foot. Not there, no, turn around... Ew. I think it went up your pants."

Just what every girl longs to hear, non?

Naturally, I ran into my room and yanked my pants off. No bug. I shook the pants.. And a HUGE bug came crawling out of the right leg. Huge. The thing was either Bugzilla or a product of steroids. I will never wear my pants that loose again. I'm considering wearing nothing but Capris until I die.

What did I do to deserve that, I ask you?

-- Anonymous, March 26, 2000

I wonder if Pamie is going to have any kind of karmic retribution for her recent slaughter. Hey Pamie, let's send Weezer bee's in the mail, in like a package or box, until they release another album. I hate fucking slugs. I hate all bugs. Bugs prove that there is no god. "I swallowed a bug." B

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

Funny thing about reading everyones bug stories and remembering so many of your own. It is sorta like blocking out a trauma, now we have all opened up that place and we will need years of therapy : )

I was lucky enough to live over thirty years of my life without being stung by a bee, wasp, hornet or any other flying bugs with lethal asses. My little dog Bear and I were out bird watching one morning and I was standing on an old log for a better view of an Oriole (sp) building a beautiful tear shaped nest. The hollow log colapsed and it scared me for a second so I laughed to myself. I was suddenly being pricked all over my lower legs, I looked down thinking I must have tripped into a wild rose bush, the first thing I saw and started laughing at was my little dog crazily biting at the air around him, wierd I thought. Than I focused my eyes around my legs and realized that the log must have housed a wasps nest and they were all over stinging the hell out of my legs and the little dog. we both made a mad dash out of the trees and into the icy river. Bothe the poor little dog and myself spent the next week recovering from the amount of stings, at least twenty for me and I could find a half dozen on the dog. I took Benydryl for the week and my knee joints still swelled up so I could not bend them. The little dog went to the vet and was given a shot of antihistamine, he spent the week very lethargic and threw up whatever he ate. We both recover just fine.

The very next summer Bear and I went for a walk in a different dog park with lots of trees and wide paths. A couple of mounain bikes passed us at one point and the last guy clipped a tree branch while passing us and off the branch falls a hornets nest, plop on the ground and the air fills with angry little critters. I yelled at the dog to "GO" which he did and I ran as well slapping away at the hornets stinging my face neck and arms. I got far enough away from them but realized I had knocked my glasses off. I could just make them out on the path near where the bugs were and knew I had to get them so I could drive myself to the hospital.(I was already feeling my throat and eyes swelling shut) So I ran back and got a few more stings but retrieved my glasses, ran to my truck and drove to the nearest E.R. where they saw me walking in and treated me immediatly. Now I think the stinging bugs have made up for the lost thirty years and we are even now so I should be safe but still I scout the area around me like a soldier when the dog and I are out for walks.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

Oh ya I forgot to mention that when Bear and I are out hiking in the late fall and winter now, if we see any hives or nests we knock them down, take them home and pull them apart. The unraveled paper then is glued to the outside of small containers and little boxes. The random lines of greys and whites make the containers quite attractive and very original looking each is never the same as another.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

I recanted many of these stories to my husband and he encouraged me to post his wasp story.

My poor husband has a genuinely kind heart. If he finds a bug in our condo he will gently escort him out. Live and let live is the best way to describe it. One day while he was at work he saw a wasp crawling on his arm. He thought about smashing it, and then remembered the old adage, "If you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone." So Bill went about reading the papers in front of him, not moving in hopes that the wasp would just take off. No such luck. As Bill sat there absorbed in his reading he suddenly felt something very painful happening to his arm. He remembers thinking, "Why does it feel like there's a burning hot needle being stuck in my arm?" He looked down to see the bastard wasp sticking it's butt in his arm, wiggling it around for good measure. Bill jumped up, did a little "Get off! Get off!" dance in the middle of the library (oh,yes, he works in a library) while all his co-workers and the patrons looked at him like he was going into convulsions. A few people tried to assist him, but the wasp would not move. It gleefully squirmed the stinger a little deeper when finally Bill's supervisor whacked him in the arm with a reference manual. Yes, it took a good long while to get that stinger out, as it was smashed in quite a bit at this point.

The moral of this story. If there's a bug, especially a stinging bug on you, kill it before it stings you! Live and let live my ass.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

When I went to India it was guava season and the family I was staying with liked to feed me anything that I was unfamiliar with. So, guavas. They look kind of like little papayas, except they're pink or white inside. Thin green skin. The kind of skin you'd think that you could see a hole in if something had, for instance, burrowed in and hatched its brood there.

One morning, Mrs. Dhamle handed me a plate of white guava pieces which I started happily snarfing up. The outside of the guava looked perfect. There were no funny holes or anything. But after eating a piece or two, I looked really closely at the next piece for some reason and noticed that the top layer of the white flesh had all sorts of tiny white worms burrowing through it. Miniscule. Apparently flavorless. And exactly the color of the guava.

"Hey", I said calmly, "I thought Hindus were vegetarian."

Well, I didn't, but I should have.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

Okay so I am trying to be a good neighbor in my apartment complex... I have a golden retriever and I scoop his poop so no one has to look at it. Yesterday in the process of coming back inside a gigantic fly, bigger than any other I've ever seen (and I have a farm), flew in my face out of the pooper scooper bag. Uugh! #1 it's disgusting to be mauled by a fly and #2 it just came out of a poo poo bag! I instantly closed the door, went inside and washed my hands and face. When returning into the living room, I find the bionic fly zipping around like he owns the place. Now I'm mad. I try getting my dog's attention turned on the fly, why not let him eat the damn thing, I've seen him eat worse. This is no success, but as I keep trying to coax my canine companion, SUPER KITTY comes flying through the air and pounces the evil creature. With one swift snap of her jaws - the enemy had been thwarted! Yeah for Zoe'!!!! Much to the dismay of my slow puppy pal - the kitty had saved the day.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

And of course, that's nothing to the stories of my biologist friends who have gone to places like Costa Rica and had insects lay eggs in their flesh.

Or the little worms that hatch in your eyeballs.

Americans don't know how lucky they are with respect to bugs. I grew up in Wisconsin and never even saw a cockroach until I moved south.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

My senior year in college, I lived in a complete dump. It was a small complex with six units and all of them were roach infested. It was so awful that I kept all food products in ziplock inside tupperware. Before eating, it was necessary to wash any plates or utensils. The landlord was little help. Earlier that semester, he moved to Aruba, leaving a son we never heard or saw in charge.

Anyway, one evening I was in my bedroom sitting at the desk, playing around on irc. I had a diet coke next to the computer and was not paying too much attention. Just taking a swig every now and then. Until the fateful swig I spit just to the left of the monitor, projecting a roach all the way to the wall..Eeeaawww! Just remembering that gives me chills.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

Thanks alot Pamie. Now my entire office thinks I am a freak cause the mental image you conjoured made me laugh so hard I was crying and I couldn't stop and noone knows why I was staring at my computer quietly laughing and crying cause I'm not supposed to be online all day!

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

The very mention of insects is the bane of my existence, and yet somehow I am compelled to share this story. Perhaps it proves theraputic? I was seven years old living in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Believe me, I know about insects, and I have stories enough to give excuse to why I go ballistic at the tiniest tickle, tug, twinge, twitch, and itch any normal person might experience throughout the day, but ignore. As anyone from southwestern Pennsylvania knows, it snows about 75-80% of the year. Even when you think its stopped, (like in late April, for example), WHOOSH! A 'white out' hits, and everyone's screwed, including the damned tulips. Some things can't be saved. Others find refuge. Bugs. Bugs, but only the worst kinds, find refuge. Ladybugs? Screwed. Earwigs, Roaches, and hornets? Refuge. My mother, anxious to escape the house, one day in the late spring, decided it would be a "sunshine fresh" kind of day to hang clothes out on the line to dry in the cool spring air. She left them out over night, and "WHOOSH"! Damned if winter didn't rear its ugly ass just to spite her. Well, one of the items hanging on the line had been my Snowsuit. the kind from "Christmas Story" where you cannot put your arms down? Yeah. Well, she had brought it up and hung it back in my closet. There it stayed for afew days, until it came time to go sledding one fine clear winter-in-April afternoon. I put my legs in, suit up the arms, scarf myself in, hood-up...when...pinch. Pinch. PINCH. Then it escalated. I was being pinched on what seemed like every portion of my body and I could barely move my arms down to reach the damned zipper. I couldn't have anyway, I was so hysterical. I ran down the hallway, slid down the spiral staircase, and bolted into the kitchen madly waving my constricted, pinched arms up and down, jumping, screaming, and smacking into walls till' my parents held me down, unzipped the suit, and watched as hornets smarmed out of the suit, filling the house with their bitchy little attitudes. Yes, dears, the little bastards had started building their 'springtime' nest in the lining of the arms and legs of MY snowsuit. See? I told you, 'refuge'. Needless to say, I am a card carrying, big-time supporter of the downy soft, electrically operated, white-noise producing invention known as a "dryer". I'm a pretty big "Raid" fan too. Anything that says "Kills Bugs DEAD" is a good thing. Pamie, You are not alone. -Sarah

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000

Cindy, I think you've been gone too long. I know you've seen earwigs, centipedes, June bugs, cicadas. You know what freaks me out? Dragon flies. Someone told me (when I was real young) that they stung you with their tails. Ugh. I have clutched my chest and fell out when there was a mosquito hawk in my house once. I had to touch fully engorged ticks (the kind that get about as big as a marble) and pull them off of my dog. Click bugs think they're so cool trying to flip themselves in the air trying to get at my carotid artery. I'll tell you one more thing...when you come to Wisconsin DO NOT think about running through the rows of a huge corn field. There are super size spiders hanging out there with webs strong enough to capture a small child. I read once where people will swallow an average of 8 spiders in their sleep during their lifetime. I've been sleeping with duct tape on my mouth since.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2000