Looking for support

Cockroaches - yuck.

The first time I encountered those HUGE ones, me and the chap had gone to India and were staying in a fairly cheap hotel. First night - culture shocked - hot and sticky - been travelling for 16 hours. I picked up my towel to prepare to go for a shower and this enormous black monster of a roach ran up my arm. ARGH!!!!!! I brushed it off screaming and swearing, and jumped onto the bed shaking with shock, and begged the boy to kill it, kill it now! 6 foot of manhood then went hunting the roach armed with a knife and a chair - did he think he was going to train it, like lions? Of course it had disappeared, probably descended back into hell where it came from.

A month later we were a bit more used to cockroaches and wouldn't think anything of eating in restaurants with them running all over the walls. I found it was easier, if I felt something crawling on me, to brush it off before looking to see what it was..... this stopped the screaming and hyperventilating.

This is why I love living in temperate climes: no scary huge insects

Great job Ghyslaine! I am glad that you had a good time with your son and his friends. I have to admit - I kinda like insects. When I was growing up I used to frequent a store called snake and spider (my mom would never let me buy one). I got to play with the tarantulas and snakes - it was great! Fortunately, since I didn't have the fear as a child, I don't have it as an adult.

What about bees? Honey bees? I think they're cute. Bear in mind, gentlemen and ladies, all those honey bees going about their business gathering pollen are gal bees.

I was last stung by a bee about 20 years ago. Imagine: A bee, poor little hard-working Earthling, is doing her thing for the larger bee community when suddenly and without warning she is stepped on by me (accidentally)! She stung me, of course; and, sadly, as I watched her she died. I've felt badly about that ever since.



Now, when I traverse fields, I keep a sharp look-out for our friends the bees. I don't want to harm any more of them! I just hope one of them doesn't sound an alarm: "There he is! He's the guy who killed Beatrice back in 1980! Let's get him!"

:tounge2:

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Did we have to mention the "R" word my only true insect phobia. I'm not crazy about bees, wasps, hornets, I just keep away from them. I even like spiders

However, hubby is just as bad about spiders and I am about "R's." If they show them on TV he can't look. So, we have a deal. He kills the "R's" and I kill the spiders. I reall don't like to kill spiders, normall just catch them and put them outside but if I didn't kill them hubby would try and he get's all "silly" about killing a spider. He won't smush it to kill it, he has to have some spray and he uses just about half the bottle on just one. So, I kill the poor little spiders.

Mr Cat - I was just a a bee meeting (I also am a friend of bees so they let me go to their monthly meetings). I can asure you that you are no longer on their top 100 most wanted list.

Oh, thank you! That's wonderful news! A portion of my burden of guilt has been lifted from my shoulders! Yay! (I'm still sorry I stepped on the little bee, though. I should have been more careful.)

:tounge2:

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I'm not a big fan of hornets and wasps, either. Unlike bees, they're pushy. They've got attitudes!



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I've never really been too freaked out about bugs, or snakes, or creepy crawlies in general. Not that I want to be up close and personal with some, but I don't mind them. I do hate worms, though. Not scared of them, they are just so gross! And they smell bad.

G. - I would have loved that cave with the bats. They are so cute! I love bats. Maybe just that closet goth in me coming out again. :bat

I have to share one story about a bug, though. My best friend (the one who hates toads) and I were sitting in her living room when the biggest fly we have ever seen flies in the room. It was just huge. Of course, we were a wee bit tipsy at the time, but we could just imagine this fly settling down in a chair looking at us and saying something like "Hey! Get me a beer...and a sammich. I'm hungry, ya know." OK, so you probably had to be there and hear the voice we gave him, but we can still go into peals of laughter over that one!

Mr. Cat,

For some strange reason, here in the Houston area, you don't really see any honey bees. We have tons of those nasty, mean red wasps.

Do honey bees migrate? Because, the only time I have really seen honey bees here is in a big cluster. Like that last time I saw some, I didn't know that's what I was looking at at first until I got about 3 feet away. There was this huge dark spot on the cyclone fencing that outlined the apartment complex I used to live in, and at first I thought it was a brown trash sack. I was curious for some reason and decided to go out and look and when I got about 3 feet from in I noticed that it was a cluster of honey bees about 1 foot in diameter and 4 inches thick. It was truely amazing! Within a couple of hours they were gone. What were they doing?

Occasionally we have a problem with "killer beas" or African Honey Bees. I don't know what the deal is with them but every year or so you hear on the news about a local "unprovoking" person being attacked and killed.

When I lived in Michingan as a child there were lots of honey bees and they never really seemed to bother anyone. The only people who ever got stung were the ones that swung at them.

Originally posted by valanhb
I do hate worms, though. Not scared of them, they are just so gross! And they smell bad.

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I used to play with worms when I was little. My mom used to babysit the little boy down the street and I was just so in love with him. I wanted to get him a present so I found a worm in our garden, tied a red bow around it's "neck" and tried to give it to him. Little did I know he was terrified of them. That new development didn't get me a boyfriend, but I had fun chasing him around the backyard with the worm! LOL

Bees...hmmmmm, I think I have a few stories, but they are all from the "wasp" family.

Myself, I have stepped on one (ouch!)walking barefoot in the backyard (don't do that anymore) and sat on one (double ouch!) when I got into our vehicle. Scared the heck out of me both times and I literally still cringe and hold my breathe if one comes close to me. I keep expecting it to attack at any moment.

Last year, one of my friends was drinking out of a Diet Coke can and a wasp flew out and bit her on the lip. (It always seems funnier when it happens to others. We still laugh about that one, I mean, what are the chances of that happening?)

And another friend of mine had to call the fire department. I had never seen this in my life but, she had thousands of wasps that completely covered a quarter of her house. It became a safety issue because her children were covered in bites and the fire department came and sprayed the wall (they used foam).

As for worms, I will Never grow to like them. I've watched what fishermen do with them and nope, not for me at all. Worms are one of the reasons these gardening gloves will remain on my hands while I do my gardening. You should see what kind lives under the rocks/plants in my garden. We have black ones, white ones, any color, size shape you want.

Roaches - knock on wood, I have never even seen what one looks like. (Don't want to from all of the descriptions) But I have encountered June bugs. I've been body slammed a few times by them and have had one get stuck in my hair. After dropping my purse, screaming for my husband to rescue me from whatever was in my hair, we did get it out. I am very careful when entering the house at nighttime now.

BTW, note taken: I will never visit India.

Once I am able to figure out how my scanner works and how to post pictures, I will post some of the trip. (tried posting pictures of Snoopy and Whiskers but I am doing something wrong).And yes, I even took pictures of the bats. I don't like them but am fascinated by how they fly around like crazy and then, in a split second, they are hanging upside down hanging onto nothing.

The bee-havior you describe is called "swarming." Whenever the queen bee leaves the hive, all her hive-mates cluster around her so that she'll be protected. I've only seen a few such swarms in my life, but as you know they're very impressive little gatherings!



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Ghyslaine, I am glad to hear everything went okay on your field trip.

And you have never seen a roach!!! OMG! You are SOOOO lucky!! I am terrified of them, and we don't even have the big huge monster ones that have been mentioned here...we have two types, the smaller german cockroach, ugggh and the larger winged one, sometimes referred to as a "waterbug", which is a glorified name for a flying, horribly disgusting cockroach!!! These are the ones that terrify me the most....the flying ones. They are about an inch long, and uglier than satan himself. I am getting the creeps just talking about it!!!

My worst roach story is from when I was in college, and living on a pretty slim income, and had to live in this run down apartment, and it had roaches, and one time I went out to the kitchen, to make some toast...and I plugged in the toaster, which I hadn't used for a couple weeks, and as soon as it started to heat up, and mind you I was standing right in front of it....about 50 cockroaches ran out of it onto the counter....I SCREAMED sooooo loud!!!!!!
They had been feeding on the bread crumbs in the bottom of it.

Needless to say, that toaster went into the trash!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh the horror of it!!! *shivers*

Oh Debby! That sounds nasty. I am sitting here visualizing the event and I cannot imagine surviving that! BTW: What did you end up having for breakfast? LOL

I have visualised Roaches on certain movies but kind of look through one eye and not the other. I don't believe that they are really that common around here. But I may be wrong.......

Actually, just a few minutes ago, finished reading your very first posting here. (the one where you introduce your 13????? cats) Nice to hear from you a few minutes later!

G.

I don't know why people are afraid of snakes.... But then again when you're watching me squeal and run away from a tiny little spider you thinking "What an idiot!"

I never minded snakes even when I was younger. When my parents were still married we went to the aligator park in Florida and I had a picture taken of me holding a baby aligator with a boa constrictor around my neck.:tounge2:

I think a lot of our fear stems from not knowing whether or not the snake is deadly. When I was a child, about 10 years old, my little friend and I found a "dead" snake in my yard. We didn't want to touch it with our hands, but got a long, dead stick from a tree and touched it; it didn't move. Then we used the stick to roll it over. It still didn't move. It was green and yellow and, I think, another color. We soon lost interest, sat on the porch swing to talk, and then walked back up to see it. It wasn't there, and no one else was in the yard. We were two frightened little girls! We had no idea what kind of snake it was. (still don't!)
As an adult, I petted a boa constrictor; it felt like a basketball. However, I am still frightened when I see a snake; I'm too afraid it might be poisonous. We have rattlesnakes in the mountains and copperheads in PA, but I have never seen either in the wild, and hope I never do!

Rattle snakes. Reminds me of that movie with Matthew Perry and Salma Hayek (can't remember the title). He was surrounded by quite a few of those babies. Yuck!

Originally posted by Ghyslaine
Oh Debby! That sounds nasty. I am sitting here visualizing the event and I cannot imagine surviving that! BTW: What did you end up having for breakfast? LOL

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Actually, I kind of lost my appetite after that....LOL

I've never really been afraid of snakes. I can't stand insects though, except for a few, like ladybugs and crickets.

My friends in college had a 15 foot Burmese python, named Esther. Somewhere there is a picture of me with her crawling across my lap.

My dad and I had to catch a few black snakes at our barn, just so my mom wouldn't see them. We would put them in a barrel and take them further out into the country. Of course there were more, but they usually didn't hang out too close to the barn.

Brian and I used to have a 10 foot albino Burmese python. He was a mean sucker and when he was hungry and one of the cats walked by his cage he'd strike the side of his cage. Needless to say he had to go because if he got out he was big enough to eat one of them.