Bug Stories-share yours

Stink bugs , moths ( I seriously freak over them ! ) Asian Ladybugs nasty little things and they bite . I like spiders and scorpians .
Waterbugs are cockroachs and as a kid my dog killed them and left them in a pile . Man I hated them .

Dragonflies are so pretty . Regular ladybugs are good bugs . Praying mantis are around here . I like worms too .

During the summer, we eat outside. Once, a bird was chasing a cicada; they flew under the umbrella. The bird flew by, afraid when it saw us, but the bug hit the support and fell into my brother’s plate.

I’d say cicadas are about 2 inches in length to give you an idea.

So we’re staring at this bug, who was slowly making its way out of the plate, covered in vinaigrette. It fell to the ground, and lo and behold, Pooka, our now departed Chinese hairless crested, sniffs at it, putting her nose close enough that the bug crawled onto it. Pooka realized, yum, this taste good, and starts to lick. And continues to lick, lick and then… slurps the bug into her mouth – a bug that’s basically the length of her muzzle!

We’re just speechless at this point. She wasn’t a dog that just ate anything, so our mouths were gaping open here! Then someone says “But the wings are hard! I that going to hurt her?”

And at that moment, she neatly spat out the two wings. They weren’t even bent or anything, I was able to clean them and give them to my mom for her class.

To this day, we don’t know if she would have eaten that bug if it hadn’t been covered in salad dressing.

One of the many great things about living in Alaska is we don’t have a lot of bugs! No roaches, fleas, ticks, even crickets. However, we do have mosquitoes that are about the size of pterodactyls. That may make up for some things XD
I’ve lived up here for about 10 years and this is the first time since I’ve been here that SLUGS have been hitchhiking onto my dogs’ fur when they go outside. These aren’t the yellow banana slugs I’m used to in to continental U.S. They are smaller, and grey. But still YUCKY. I usually make my husband do “slug checks” but he went to bed early one night, so I had the unfortunate duty.
My littler shih tzu comes insides, and lo and behold, two slugs tangled up in her leg fur.
I got them out with a paper towel and was unsure what to do with them. I was afraid they would crawl back up the trashcan or something. I decided to put salt on them. BAD IDEA. I saw their little eye stalks retract in their head (in what I assumed was pain) and I started freaking out.(Not too sure what I was expecting >_>) Woke up my husband, saying “I’m a monster!!” crying on how I am a terrible person and I should have just let them go like I do other bugs. At the time, I was going through pretty emotional stuff anyways and I guess that was the icing on the cake. My husband thought I was crazy, but I hate hurting anything! I was the kid who yelled at other kids for stepping on ant hills because “they worked so hard on that hill and that’s their home!!” XD

I don’t generally have a problem with bugs. I love my banana slugs, I ignore just about everything else but try to avoid the ones that bite. I think that the only ones I kill are black widows, but I only see those once or twice a year, usually when cleaning the garage or moving something that’s been out in the yard too long. One of my cats loves to hunt spiders, but unless he’s being extra cruel I don’t intervene.

However, I work at a public library…and after three special little bug incidents I can be very nervous about checking in DVDs.

To check in returned library items, we have to make sure all the pieces are accounted for and the item is in the same shape in which it left the library. So for DVDs, you open the case and check the disc. Yeah….one night, I’m on the last hour check in desk so it’s like 8:30, I’m the only one in the back workroom, and I pop open a DVD case and magically I’m across the room in my wheely chair. It takes a minute for me to process what the hell freaked me out so much. I had seen movement in the DVD case, and I when I steeled my nerves and went back to investigate, there were like a half dozen little roaches swarming out of the case and climbing all the desk and keyboard. One of the hard core Southern ladies squished em all for me, cause except for like giant hissing cockroach pets, I’d never frickin seen a cockroach in real life. We charged the person who returned that DVD a cleaning fee =P

I’ve been at this library for almost four years, and I have had three live roach incidents all coming out of DVD cases (different patrons returning the items too, yuck), and one case of mites. My library fellows have also had roach incidents, and once, a freaky looking yellow spider crawled out of a DVD case. But since it wasn’t a roach we put him outside. I feel like we should have a sign or statement on the library card application form alerting patrons to the fact that the library doesn’t want their bugs and they will be fined for returning them with our materials.

So I guess I should amend my previous statement, I don’t mind bugs as long as they don’t surprise me at work.

Reading this thread makes me glad I live as far north as I do. I think the largest bug I’ve seen is about the size of the end of you thumb and it’s usually a bee or wasp. The winters here probably keep the bugs from getting very big. And as far as I know we don’t have roaches here(or not many if we do).

Here’s a fun fact for everyone.

Those “potato/pill/roley poley” bugs that most of us played with at children, are actually not bugs at all, but one of the worlds tiniest crustaceans.

I adore pillbugs, and when I was a little kid, I thought they were trilobites that the grown-ups failed to notice! 🙂

I’m also glad I live in Minnesota where the winters keep the bug populace under control. I’m not scared of them persay, but I really dislike spiderwebs and dead bugs in my home. (And I don’t like using insecticides either.)