Dead Bugs

[poliphilo]

There was a spider in the sink. I fetched a piece of paper and scooped it out. I like spiders.

In fact I like all bugs. My fear of them has to do with hurting them. Those fat squashable bodies, those flimsy wings and legs. For some reason I'm horrified by dead bugs. Living ones are fine. Dead ones- aaargh!

When I was a very small child I was sitting in the bath and I turned round and there was a big drowned moth bobbing about behind me. I got out of that water soooo fast...

Swimming pools were always problematic for me because of the drowned insects. Still are. I steer clear of pools though I love swimming in the sea. I guess insects must drown in the sea, but you don't see them do you? Maybe the waves sink em. Maybe the fish gobble 'em down double-quick fast.

I just watched Dennis Potter's Singing Detective. It's full of horrors. But the bit that got me was when the little boy killed a ladybird. Omigod.

If there's one thing I despise in a movie it's gratuitous bug-squashing.

Comments

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I find it a useful gague of someones character, the way they treat bugs. I try to adopt uncle Thoby's philosophy 'the world is big enough for thee and me!' - Tristram Shandy

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I went through a rough stage of the Scruples, when I was young and tender-hearted, and I read about a man in India who found an ant on his suitcase while on a train, and he interrupted his trip and carefully returned the ant to its home.

Soon after I read about the Indian man, I was driving along a country road and noticed a poor ant struggling up my windshield. Moved by an attack of Scruples and wanting to be kind, I decided to turn around and take the ant back to my driveway so he could find his little family again.

I slowed down, pulled into a side road, pulled back out onto the highway, drove about fifty yards, and the ant flew off into the air.

I turned around again and continued on my way. I hope I didn't run over it, but I probably did.

--

On my birthday, if I remember, I take honey or molasses or cantelope out to an anthill to give them a birthday treat.

--

I'm glad you're tender-hearted. It's one of the things I appreciate about you.

--

Only thugs
Squash bugs.

Let's be nice
to moths and lice.

--

Remember the Janists? I think that was the sect. They don't want to kill any living thing, so everywhere they walk they carry little brooms with them so they can clear paths of small insects.

--

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

bugs are facinating. But then there are those pesky cockroaches. And we have a problem with ant SWARMS at work.

Once when I was a kid, I was sitting at a picnic table and a pair of what I now know were mating praying mantisis (prey manti?) landed in front of me. I watched in facination as one of them beheaded the other...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

An infestation of roaches might cause me to lose my cool.

What we have instead is a colony of woodlice- cute little things like itsy-bitsy armadilloes.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And do the insects enjoy being swept away with a soft broom?

I have been known to pick up worms from the sidewalk and return them to the grass. There are, of course, seasons when there are so many worms on the sidewalk that one would never get to where one is going if one stopped for every one.

God scorns the killers
Of caterpillars.

And angels despise
Those who swat flies.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Can you not be kind?
If bitten, don't mind.

Even imps down in hell
Love the way stinkbugs smell!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't believe we have stinkbugs in Britain.

I don't believe I'm sorry...

fellow bug fan

[amritarosa.livejournal.com]

"I have been known to pick up worms from the sidewalk and return them to the grass."

Me too! My mercy even extends to slugs which, yes, I know is perverse but hey...I can't help it.

One of my pet peeves in animated or otherwise drawn.modelled insects that are not at least generally anatonmiocally correct. Right number of body sections, right number of legs. Badly drawn cartoon bugs send me into a rant quicker than you can say "Drosophila.

Re: fellow bug fan

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll rescue a slug in difficulties too.

My friend was complaining how the worker ants in Antz and A Bug's Life are male when they ought to be female. She has a point.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I have been known to pick up worms from the sidewalk and return them to the grass. There are, of course, seasons when there are so many worms on the sidewalk that one would never get to where one is going if one stopped for every one.

I do that when I can, too. We have rather large spiders at the cottage, and some of them would make you rather ill were you bitten. I try to stay out of their way...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We don't have poisonous spiders in Britain...at least I don't think we do...

[beentothemoon.livejournal.com]

I never gratuitously smush bugs. That being said there was a tarantula the size of a dinner plate outside my apartment last night. I'm pretty sure it gave me the finger.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We share this house with a number of largeish spiders. Once in a while one or other of them will scuttle across the floor.

Hey, who needs wildlife documentaries?

[egilsdottir.livejournal.com]

when i was in college, the shower in the bathroom of my apartment had some kind of plumbing problem. a maintenance guy came over and worked on it, and said he would come back the next day to patch up the large hole by the shower head.

while i was taking a shower that night, a large cockroach popped out of the hole and started climbing down the wall of my shower. i screamed bloody murder, and jumped out of the shower so fast i'm surprised i didn't hurt myself.

that incident took place in my pre-cat days. now i live with two, and i have yet to see anything alive in my apartment that doesn't belong here. i'm sure a bug or two must have wandered in at some point, but the cats took care of it, sparing me the pain & agony of dealing with the creatures. although i am afraid of bugs & spiders, i am also too terrified to kill them!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We had a cat once who caught slugs in the garden and brought them home to us as offerings.

[morrison-maiden.livejournal.com]

Aw, this is such an endearing post :)

I can relate. I don't particularly like bugs, but I have a soft spot for rodents. My grandmother once had a mouse running loose that the cat had brought in. She eventually found it and killed it with her cane right in front of me! It was so horrible :(

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

O dear!

We had the same thing. The mouse was loose in the house for ages. I finally cornered it behind the books in the bookshelves, caught it and released it into the great outdoors.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I finally cornered it behind the books in the bookshelves, caught it and released it into the great outdoors.

I've trapped mice before. This last time I got an infestation I bought some of that nice expanding spray foam and filled all the cracks. And a few other things that didn't need filling. And managed to stick my head to the kitchen floor...but no more mice. I always felt awful when I had to dispose of their bodies down the toilet...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We don't have cats any more. When we did we got to dispose of a lot of tiny, chewed up corpses. I found it heart-breaking.