Top 7 Bugs (PVT)

PA TImes | 8/9/06 | Mullah Pissant

[pissant]

Ok. Enough news about Joe Lieberman, angry A-Rabs, and kittens around here. It's time to tell us what your favorite bug is and why.

Pissants top 7 are as follows:

7. Potato Bug. The little fellers are like miniature Armadillos and was one you could pick up as a kid without getting bitten or stung.

6. Earwig or Pincher Bug. Those pinchers on their tushes are quite intimidating. And for some reason like to hang out in Dahlias, so beware.

5. Butterfly. They always looked the best tacked to my bug collection corkboard. And were much easier to catch than grasshoppers.

4. Army Ants. These little communists are simply amazing. Putting your arm into an ant hill as a kid was a right of passage.

3. Dung Beetle. Besides being awesome at rolling a turd accross the ground, the name is a useful insult to be tossed around at cocktail parties.

2. Bird Eating Spider. There is nothing cooler than watching a giant spider attack a bird or small rodent.

1. Praying Mantis. This bug has inspired many nightmares in people and is responsible, with the onset of National Geographic photos and TV, for inspiring many loonies to claim they have been abducted by aliens. Any similarity to James Carville is strictly incidental.

[EX52D]

Easy there wall...

[Pyro7480]

Do you mean Woodlice?

(Speaking of pissant's remark that they look like "miniature Armadillos," the scientific name of the woodlice's genus is Armadillidium.)

[Pyro7480]

Barking spiders? In Washington State? I thought they were native to Australia.

[SoothingDave]

Do you mean Woodlice?

That's the one. Potato bug or pill bug.

SD

[Pyro7480]

Interestingly enough, they are considered to be crustaceans.

[SoothingDave]

That means you could fix 'em with garlic and butter, right?

SD

[Pyro7480]

LOL! Probably not, due to their size, but maybe their larger cousins the giant isopod.

[Battle Axe]

Don't know how many entomologists there are on FR, but I'm on. UCD 1968 entomology.

Later I was a grad TA at Iowa State. Worked in honeybees until I became hypersensitive.

[wallcrawlr]

was that a question?

if so...ya know

[SoothingDave]

Probably not, due to their size,

Then bread 'em and deep fry 'em. Just like langostinos.

SD

[Sax]

Looks like a slipper tail lobster. Good eating and you don't have to wrestle them as much as spiny lobsters when you pull them out of their nooks and crannies. With all of their legs underneath them, they don't get much leverage.

[Armedanddangerous]

Does my 1972 Super Beetle convertible...orange in color..count?

It was my first cool car..until it caught fire on the Interstate one day....

[wolfcreek]

Bottom of list: fire ants, Africanized killer bees, weevils, cockroaches, scorpions, poisonous spiders (recluse, Black widow) chiggers, mesquitos and fleas. And anything that eats on my tomato and pepper plants.

[Species8472]

My neice (USMC active duty in Iraq) says that the "Camel Spiders" are to be feared!

[leilani]

Woodlice? Potato bug? Pill bug? Never heard of those. What part of the world are you guys from anyway? The picture you posted is a doodlebug! I think this little guy must be one of those linguistic marker words that give away what part of the country you grew up in (like the mosquito hawk/dragonfly/helicopter bug is).

[leilani]

Ditto on your nomination for all time best bug ever (lightening bug). No contest. The only bug on the planet that even an unrepentant extremist anti-bug hate-monger such as myself could ever have any respect for.

[Pyro7480]

Well, the name I grew up with was "pill bug." But I was going with the formal Wikipedia name (I guess it's British usage).

[Jet Jaguar]

Child of the earth. We used to see these all the time near the ditches in NW Albuquerque.

[Jet Jaguar]

Free shipping!? Wow! You're good!

[rahbert]

UCD 1980 Mech Engr