Posted on 02/02/2020 10:35:37 AM PST by SamAdams76
When I was growing up, we used to catch bugs all the time. In fact, us boys used to catch flies and such and toss them into spider webs to see how the spiders would dart out from their spider hole and wrap their prey into a cocoon and suck the fluids out of them. Pretty cruel stuff, I know.
This was way before their was an internet, video games, and other ways for boys to entertain themselves indoors. In fact, if us boys were indoors at all during the day, our mothers would shove a broom into our hands and put us to work. So we never went indoors and allowed the mothers to hand us peanut butter sandwiches and Kool Aid out the window. We would not come indoors until dinnertime if we could help it.
So anyway, the girls would hang out with us from time to time too and they never wanted anything to do with the bugs. But the ladybugs were a totally different story. They thought the ladybugs were "cute" and they would allow us to put the ladybugs on them and they would watch the ladybugs climb up their arms and who knows where else where.
Thing is, when you remove the pretty shell, a ladybug is a pretty ugly creature, right up there with cockroaches and spiders.
Ever had a run in with a wheel bug? My first time was seeing one sitting next to me in bed. I nearly impaled the ceiling with my head. Never seen anything like it. I googled it later and learned its bite is extremely painful.
“A squirrel is just a rat with a better publicist.’
But he lives in the penthouse. That mean anything?
rwood
Not me. If I need to move a mantis, I get a stick and coax it to crawl onto the stick.
I am reminded of the scientist and the flea.
The scientist would clap his hands and the flea would jump.
He removed one of the flea’s legs and clapped an it jumped.
He removed another one and clapped and the flea jumped.
Finally with only one leg left, he clapped and the flea jumped.
Removing the flea’s last leg he clapped but the flea
just laid there...
Aha, he said, fleas with no legs are DEAF!
Gasteracantha cancriformis, the Spiney-backed Orb Weaver / Smiley-faced Spider is a cool spider, too...
And then there are the colorful camouflaged crab spiders that we’d find hiding in flowers waiting to catch unsuspecting pollinators. These spiders could be yellow, white, green, gray, even pink.
My other favorites were the Common Garden Spider/Yellow Garden Spider, an Argiope, which produces a huge, very strong web with a zig zag strip in its middle. When alarmed, they start swinging on the web, making it sway wildly back and forth. ...
The Green Lynx Spider which we had in Missouri, a gorgeous ambush-hunting bright green spider with spiny legs, unfortunately not a common sight since they are very well camouflaged.
In Illinois my Mom’s magnolia tree often had a peculiar spider that made a miniature net that it would stretch apart with the tips of its legs like a rubber band and use to lunge at or more often drop over prey. It was called the Ogre-faced Spider, one of the Deinopsis types. Definitely not cute but amazing.
Here in Florida is the Golden Orb Weaver of the genus Nephila, and which is sometimes called a banana spider [though it is not the infamous unrelated banana spider of Central America], which makes very large gold colored webs, and unlike the other spiders has a tendency to make them in family groups. The males are quite small and build their little webs adjacent to the females’ but when visiting her take care to stay on the opposite side of the web from her to avoid becoming a meal, though I have yet to see a male get hurt by a female. Maybe where prey is abundant he gets spared.
Same here. And would tie a string on those pretty Junebugs so they wouldn’t fly away.
A neighbor a few houses down has one. When it shows up I don’t see the SOBs for a little while.
Yep. those are the ones!
It’s really very strange, especially considering my arachnophobia.
Don’t remember ever seeing one of those scary looking things. But I almost killed myself when working in the garden and spotted my first potato bug. Whipped my head back into the faucet. Needed 4 stiches!
Pillbugs. Did somebody say Pillbugs?
How about Giant Isopods !...
Good eating, too, from what I’ve heard.
Yeah really.
This thread is...enlightening.
Because they are charming, intelligent and for some reason, seem to really enjoy interacting with humans.
Haven’t seen an Argiope in 40 years
No idea where they went.
:(
I remember when we were very young my little sister and her friend collecting them. They’re so cute. We called them sow bugs.
That has definitely been my experience with them. Heck, I love those little guys! i think I even named one or two of them.
I don’t find rats or squirrels repulsive. I also like ladybugs and spiders.
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