Kitty Fear Factor

On 2003-12-08, OU812? wrote:

It's a Junebug... we get em here in NB, Canada too.. ick ick ick shudder....

If Junebugs are green flying beetles, then Palmetto Bugs are
not Junebugs. When I was a child we would catch a Junebug and tie a
thread to one hind leg. The Junebug buzzed around on the end of his
thread, which we thought was great fun. Junebugs were very fond of our
neighbor's windfall peaches. Our cat loved to stalk Junebugs. They
don't seem to be as numerous now as they were all those years ago.

William Hamblen wrote:
On 2003-12-08, OU812? wrote:

It's a Junebug... we get em here in NB, Canada too.. ick ick ick
shudder....

If Junebugs are green flying beetles, then Palmetto Bugs are
not Junebugs. When I was a child we would catch a Junebug and tie a
thread to one hind leg. The Junebug buzzed around on the end of his
thread, which we thought was great fun. Junebugs were very fond of
our neighbor's windfall peaches. Our cat loved to stalk Junebugs.
They
don't seem to be as numerous now as they were all those years ago.

What we call junebugs here are huge (1 inch) brown, flying beetles that make
a horrible sound when you stomp them.

Kristy
shuddering
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*Bomber*

wrote in message
...
m. L. Briggs wrote:

There were these enormous flying
bugs, like dragonflies except much bigger and weirder-looking.

Could it have been a Praying Mantis?

No, not a mantis. I've seen those - we had them in Massachusetts.
They're green, as I remember. When I was about 6 or 7 years old in
day camp during the summer, I remember the counsellor telling us
that we should *never*, *ever* kill a praying mantis. Actually, I
think they were legally protected at the time. (Also, do mantises
fly? They jump, but I don't think they have wings.)


They fly. Believe me, they fly. My dad called me outside once to see one
that was somewhere between 2-3 inches long and green. It was sitting on one
of my mom's fuschia impatients plants. I happened to have on a bright
fuschia t-shirt. When I bent down to look at it, it cocked its head at me
and then jumped towards me. When I started to rapidly backpedal, it spread
its wings and started to fly at me. Whereupon I panicked and knocked it
away with my hand. It landed in the grass and righted itself, so I don't
think I hurt it.

I'm not normally squeamish about most bugs...as long as they're not
poisonous or fire ants, I even catch them and put them outside unharmed.
But I was extremely startled at the time, since I didn't think that mantises
flew, either.

Now I know different.

--
Jennifer Winters
Nerd in babe's clothing

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On 07 Dec 2003 21:53:43 GMT, (KatGrrrrl99) wrote:

Bastet has actually dropped a LIVE palmetto bug in my lap!!! Feel
lucky you didn't have to feel it;s legs on your skin!!! EWWWWWWW!!!!
(shudders)

I used to work for a company whose office was next to a railroad
yard. On one occasion, I was sitting at my desk, typing, and
suddenly felt a tickling sensation ascending my right leg. I shook
my pants leg, and a two-inch-long roach fell out of my pants. I
stomped it before it could run off and hide elsewhere. I figured
that it had come up from Florida on a train (the local roaches don't
tend to get that large), and had looked up my pants leg, seen shadow,
and decided that this looked like a good place to hide.

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--
John F. Eldredge --
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

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On Mon, 8 Dec 2003 12:51:52 -0400, "OU812?"
wrote:

Hopitus2 wrote:
Pretty good, Joyce, but "huge, honkin' cockroach *that flies*" is
more accurate. I think they get their name from living in the
numerous palmetto trees down here. Up north, I've seen something
similar, in size and shape, but it "clicks" (I swear!). Don't have
the faintest what *that's* called!

It's a Junebug... we get em here in NB, Canada too.. ick ick ick
shudder....

Damn things try to get in thru the window and just keep thwacking
against it til they knock themselves silly.

Here in Tennessee we have May beetles (brown, 1/4" to 1/2" long, very
inept flyers, usually hatch in April or May) and June bugs (about the
same size, a glossy green color, equally inept flyers, usually show
up in June). What Hopitus2 is describing is usually called a click
beetle, about the same length as a June bug, but only about half the
width, and, if I remember correctly, dark brown in color

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--
John F. Eldredge --
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

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On Mon, 08 Dec 2003 23:15:30 GMT, wrote:

m. L. Briggs wrote:

There were these enormous flying
bugs, like dragonflies except much bigger and weirder-looking.

Could it have been a Praying Mantis?

No, not a mantis. I've seen those - we had them in Massachusetts.
They're green, as I remember. When I was about 6 or 7 years old in
day camp during the summer, I remember the counsellor telling us
that we should *never*, *ever* kill a praying mantis. Actually, I
think they were legally protected at the time. (Also, do mantises
fly? They jump, but I don't think they have wings.)

No, these weird-looking bugs actually were kind of interesting -
until one landed on me, LOL. They were brown or maybe black. I
have no idea what they were. This was in Sonoma County, CA, if that
helps.

Yes, mantises have wings and can fly. The wings are under protective
covers, which the mantis lifts up out of the way when it wants to
fly. They don't fly very far, from my experience, only 20 feet or
so, which is generally enough to get them away from a predator. The
largest mantis that I have ever seen had a body six or seven inches
long, with a legspan of close to a foot. This was in central
Kentucky, so there are probably tropical species that are even
larger.

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--
John F. Eldredge --
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

John F. Eldredge wrote:

I used to work for a company whose office was next to a railroad
yard. On one occasion, I was sitting at my desk, typing, and
suddenly felt a tickling sensation ascending my right leg. I shook
my pants leg, and a two-inch-long roach fell out of my pants. I
stomped it before it could run off and hide elsewhere. I figured
that it had come up from Florida on a train (the local roaches don't
tend to get that large), and had looked up my pants leg, seen shadow,
and decided that this looked like a good place to hide.

Aaaaaagh!! Where was the Shudder Warning on this one? (I know, we don't
have a "shudder warning". I think we need one!) I thought this was going to
be a sweet story about a cat's whiskers tickling your leg! Yecchh!!

Joyce

I didn't think of a mantis, but going back and re-reading the
description guess it could be. Anyway, I always figured that a praying
mantis is a pretty neat bug. Weird looking, an extremely efficient
predator as for as other bugs are concerned, but harmless to people.

Really they're harmless? My mother freaked out over them and always said they
were poisonous. I believed it to this day. She called them a "Devil's Horse"
and I didn't even know the proper name for them till I was an adult. Weird.

Sherry

Hee hee, Joyce....one of the things I miss most about living in your area of
the country was the *lack* of the bugs we got down here on a year-round
basis! I remember only a few ants, and a couple black-widow spiders during
the whole 7 years we lived in Bay area, San Carlos and Sunnyvale! When we
got back here, and summer came with its ungodly heat factor for man and
beast alike, it didn't bother me a bit (was afraid my blood had "thickened"
to the northern clime) but I sure had to get used, again, to the outside
critters running in and out of the house whenever they feel like it through
tiny openings. Yecchh is right......



wrote in message
...
: John F. Eldredge wrote:
:
: I used to work for a company whose office was next to a railroad
: yard. On one occasion, I was sitting at my desk, typing, and
: suddenly felt a tickling sensation ascending my right leg. I shook
: my pants leg, and a two-inch-long roach fell out of my pants. I
: stomped it before it could run off and hide elsewhere. I figured
: that it had come up from Florida on a train (the local roaches don't
: tend to get that large), and had looked up my pants leg, seen shadow,
: and decided that this looked like a good place to hide.
:
: Aaaaaagh!! Where was the Shudder Warning on this one? (I know, we don't
: have a "shudder warning". I think we need one!) I thought this was going
to
: be a sweet story about a cat's whiskers tickling your leg! Yecchh!!
:
: Joyce

Hopitus2 wrote:

Hee hee, Joyce....one of the things I miss most about living in your
area of the country was the *lack* of the bugs we got down here on a
year-round basis!

It's true. I'm originally from the Boston area, and that has its share
of creepy crawlies, but it doesn't hold a candle to south Florida!

But around here, we don't get a lot of bugs. I've hardly seen a single
cockroach since I moved here - maybe they prefer humidity. Barely any
mosquitoes, either - same reason. Ants, yes - I do get those in the
summer. But they're the little tiny ones, and they're not so bad. Yes,
they do tend to arrive in the thousands, and they form those "ant freeways"
between the food source (the cats' food area, of course) and their colony.
But better those than the huge things I used to see in Massachusetts (don't
even tell me about Floridian ants!). (One gripe though: the cat food area
is right next to my back door in the kitchen. So do the ants come in the
back door to go right to the cat food? No - they come in through the front
door, march through the livingroom and kitchen to get to the cat food,
tracking ant schmutz all over my apartment. They don't even knock, the
rude little buggers.)

We do get much bigger spiders than you see in Boston, but I'm more used
to them now. They tend to hang out on the ceiling and not bother anyone
except the cats, who go insane trying to figure out how to reach them.

Joyce