That’s what my wife said… He’s out in the garage drying out now…
Yeah, but you can squish countless critters with an inadvertant step.
I’m glad I don’t run into them.
Only critter I faced yesterday was while reading a water meter- popped the lid and there was a brown toad about the size of my fist sitting there right square on the meter proud as you please. Wish I’d had my phone to snap a photo.
Say what you will about Ohio, but I am glad I live where there isn’t a lot of wildlife that can kill me!
When I was 11 and lived in the rural Texas hill country I was outside one summer. We had an old “sparky” type throw switch for the main power but it was long since disconnected. I opend it up (courious kid) and found an old birds nest. broken eggs and such and I reached my hand in there to sweep it out and you guessed it, BAM! Man that sucker hurt like H***. Finger swelled up and I was in pain for days. I put some wet baking powder on the entry wound, wraped in a paper towel because that what my mom would have done. The beast was about and inch and a half long before I obliterated it with my boot, dust to dust…little bas**rd!
If you bury it in tree pitch, then bury the whole thing, in 65 million years, someone can dig it up, extract DNA, and create a really big one, ala Jurassic Park.[:D]
Well, if you want entertainment (and potentially alot of exercise) in Texas, just take a casual stroll through the roadside bluebonnet patches. Those places have the highest per capita rattlesnake count of any area in the state.
Yes, it’s a simple thing, like "Oh look at the pretty flowers; I think I’ll pick some . . . "
KAPOW! “Hello, 911, yeah, I think I screwed up.”
If you don’t like spiders Glamdring, you’re not gonna like Aussie. Don’t have tarantulas or black widows, but we have funnel webs, redbacks, wolf spiders and all sorts of bitey things. The most common are huntsman spiders. They can grow as big as your hand and love to hang out inside houses and sheds. Luckily they are not poisonous. They do bite however and move like greased lightning. They also have a habbit of dropping from ceilings and door frames. Fun.
In Japan and Asia, there are giant water bugs. They look like big cockroaches, but they live underwater, can fly, AND bite! A friend of a friend ate one at an open market on a dare (yes they were being sold as food [+o(] ), and his reaction was as expected - Bleurgh bluergh bluergh bluergh!!! It looked so nasty, like a 3" roach that died a long time ago under a wet straw mat!
Thanks G, there went my appetite for dinner…
Hi;
As you know I live in Texas Hill Country. We have them. On Good authority( A Game Warden Trained in Insects.) the Young uns are more dangerous. They will hit you with a whole dump of venom at one strike. The Adults on the other hand will size the venom output to their needs.They try to avoid Humans.
Good on yer G, I was about to cook my dinner. Think I’ll just have another beer…
No kidding. There are advantages to living in a place where the winter is cold enough to kill.
Suddenly -20 zero and 3 feet of snow aint so bad.
Yes, there too! I recall Peter Jackson used a funnel web spider as his basis for Shelob in the Lord of the Rings movies. When I learned that fact, it immediately quashed my desire to go to the land down under!
I live in a suburb of Chicago. I really love those Winter days when it gets down to 20 below zero. Why you may ask? Because that temperature will kill a whole lot of bugs.
Hey, for those who don’t know what a giant water bug looks like, here ya go:
These nasty aqua-roaches grasp their prey with their forelimbs and then use a peircing proboscis to inject enzymes that turn their victims into a gruesome juice box to be sucked dry. They will attack and eat anything they can subdue, including fish and small amphibians.
I have strange taste in hobbies, I know.
Almost sounds as mean as the Brain Bug in Starship Troopers movie…
Oh, I think that’s poisonous! Please keep safe, Stikpusher. 
And yet…you have to imagine that there’s someone, somewhere, thinking
“Man…I bet that would be good on a toasted bun…”