Last Summer I was exiting a building, and as I passed the threshold I felt an icky ‘thump’ on my head. I had thought that the Cave Cricket was the most repulsive bug I’d encountered – but that was before the Wheel Bug fell on my head:
Posted on 08/03/2016 3:51:19 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
Those look like the ones I’ve seen many times in North Carolina: huge spiders that spin beautiful webs all over the fencing in the tourist-y spots on the Outer Banks. They just sit there all day, waiting...they probably eat up a lot of the bad bugs.
-JT
You probably scared it away :-)
Caterpillars can be very cool. The caterpillar of the common swallowtail butterfly has these big, red inflatable horns that come out when it’s threatened.
I am not prejudiced, I squash all of them!
I’m a big fan of live and let live with the spiders in my home because they capture and eat blood-sucking bugs like mosquitoes. Pretty much anything that eats a mosquito is OK in my book, including bats as long as they’re not rabid bats.
Larger plots of land and probably more plant variety.
Looks like a bark beetle.
The wheel bug?
It’s also called a ‘dinosaur’ bug. It’s big and awful; apparently has a really nasty bite, and a bad smell.
I have a daughter like that. She loves cockroaches, too.
Common orb weaver, aka “garden spider.” They’re lovely.
And larger houses without many inhabitants to disturb the private lives of the small household guests.
I keep telling Bill the Son, when he doesn't clean up from his meals, that he's going to have lots of six-legged friends once he leaves home.
Yes, that’s the one I used to see all over the Outer Banks. Huge, beautiful webs.
I found one making her web in the corner of my daughter’s bedroom once. Scared the bejabbers out of me, although I admire arachnids outdoors. The kids still laugh at me when they remember it.
I think we learn this stuff. I distinctly remember being about 2 or 3 years old, and playing with an enormous roach or palmetto bug that I had found. I wasn’t afraid of it at all; but as I grew up I ‘learned’ to have the heebie-jeebies over most bugs; and except for ladybugs, dragonflies, butterflies, ants - I despise bugs ;-)
I know I learned my aversion to roaches from my mother, but she wasn’t afraid of spiders ... which are much more likely to be dangerous. My children are all very environmental-y and make friends of every available creepy-crawly. It bugs normal people!
The pic was certainly not from a wealthy neighborhood.
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I learned this at Okefenokee Swamp State park
It’s called Spider Sniffing. You go out at night, after dark, and place a flash light on your forehead and shine it into the darkness. Every time you see a bright jewel you see a spider’s eye.
There will be many
Most around my yard are green but some are orange or yellow
When I was growing up, we always had these very small, ivory-colored, sort of ‘fuzzy’ spiders in the house. They never bothered us, so we weren’t afraid and hardly noticed them. Then one morning, after living in that place for 20 years, I woke up with several bad bites on my abdomen. I think one of those spiders had gotten into my nightclothes; that’s the only thing it could have been, as we never saw any other biting bugs.
No repercussions, just irritating bites; but I’ve never been able to identify that spider - I’ve never seen it anywhere else again.
-JT
That is so cool, I had to look it up; but I’m wondering if it only works in areas without a lot of ‘light pollution’, or would work in the suburbs:
http://gizmodo.com/this-is-how-to-find-the-spiders-that-are-staring-at-you-1721584332
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