What I didn't know about bugs

Artyczar

Artyczar

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Today I stepped on a giant red ant with my shoe. I stepped on him once and he didn't die. He squirmed around and looked like he was in pain. I gasped and said, "OMG, I'm sorry," and quickly stepped on him again to kill him as fast as possible, putting him out of him misery.

Then it ocurred to me, we have a lot of bugs around here in the desert that get into the house. More recently, mosquitos. They are hard to get and mjp has been sucking them up with a vacuum. So I wondered if bugs felt physical pain because those bugs in the vacuum probably do not die right away.

Yes, they do! Not only do they feel pain, they can feel long-lasting chronic pain after healing from an injury. Now I am feeling really bad. What a discovery that I never even thought about.
 
I have a splinter in my finger and I think it will be long lasting chronic pain too. When I swat a fly I swat him again if he wiggles. :)
 
Since I posted this, I've thought about it a lot! (Too much!) And I think about the fight or flight reaction. I think it might be perfectly normal to kill a bug that is inside the house. If a stranger came into my house, I might shoot them. So, it's either them or me, right? Ha ha ha ha!

Oh God. I will just try to make sure I get them in one swat. I really don't like living things to suffer. No matter how ugly they are.
 
Since insects have a nervous system, it stands to reason that they feel pain. But do they actually experience it in the way that humans or mammals and birds do? That is another question.

In any event, I did not make nature the way it is. For that you gotta go talk to Chuck Darwin; it's all his fault. :)
 
I have a problem with spiders. I also read that they are not bugs but some kind of animal. Since my balcony is surrounded by trees, they walk into my apartment and seem to enjoy my kitchen. My son will usually walk them back to the balcony and throws them back in the tree. I’ve been whacking them with anything I can find and feel bad about it. I have drowned a few in the toilet and thought about it a lot. It must be real shitty to go down those dark pipes, especially if you are a young spider full of dreams. 😟
 
Last edited:
Desforges said:
I guess I’ll have to walk them out with a little more respect. Will try!
Click to expand...

Take a container like a glass. Put it over the spider (or whatever other hideous thing). Then slide a piece of paper or cardboard under the glass and the spider, so that the spider is now sitting on the paper but under the glass. That way you can take them out without either touching or harming them.
 
brianvds said:
Take a container like a glass. Put it over the spider (or whatever other hideous thing). Then slide a piece of paper or cardboard under the glass and the spider, so that the spider is now sitting on the paper but under the glass. That way you can take them out without either touching or harming them.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea and might be eaiser for the bigger bugs than the itty bitty ones.
 
That is the way I removed a blacksnake from my hallway. Put a little trashcan over him and slid a throw rug under it and carried him outside.
 
Two flyswatters are on my shopping list. I mop floors with boric acid water to help prevent/kill creepy crawlies. I spray around entrance doors.
They can be outside--that's where they belong.
 
This thread needs a little music :p

Some bugs do creep me out (cockroaches, silverfish, earwigs) but I’m happy with a spider or two in the house, while outside just about anything that doesn’t aim to eat me, sting me hard (bees are fine), or drink my blood is ok. My son was really into that sort of thing—he’d catch salamanders or snakes and we’d keep them in a terrarium for a day or two and then let them go. One garter snake even produced a litter (or whatever you call a gaggle of their young). Mice and rats are a different problem, but i have neighbors who moved in a couple of years ago with two very efficient cats, and I havent seen a mouse or a rat around here since then.

Up here we don’t have any poisonous snakes, where I grew up we had copperheads and cottonmouths. I remember my dad flipping out because my older brother and his buddies had caught an adult copperhead and were keeping it in a large terrarium in my brother’s room. I’m not sure what happened to the snake, I assume it “went to the farm”.
 
Okay, so yesterday morning, I felt something on my back. I thought it was just one of my dreadlocks poking through my shirt because they are kind of wooly and do feel itchy at times through a t-shirt. But then it felt crawly and then I'm like, "ouch!" Something was biting me under my shirt on my shoulder blade. It felt sort of big.

I tried to squish it through my shirt, but I could not reach it on the place on my back. I started slapping it with a shoe! :LOL: Finally, I just ripped off my shirt and wiggled the shirt out on the floor. Out came the biggest camel spider you've ever seen. I'd never seen one before! They are the most ugly hairy things in the universe. It went crawling toward the sliding glass window in my studio and I yelled for Michael.

"OMG! Come in here! Bring the vacuum! This thing was biting me on my back."

He ran in and had a look at it stuck to the window in the bright light.

"Jesus! That was inside your shirt?"

He sucked it up with the vacuum and it hardly fit inside the nozzle. I still have the heebie-jeebies! :sick:
 
Artyczar said:
Okay, so yesterday morning, I felt something on my back. I thought it was just one of my dreadlocks poking through my shirt because they are kind of wooly and do feel itchy at times through a t-shirt. But then it felt crawly and then I'm like, "ouch!" Something was biting me under my shirt on my shoulder blade. It felt sort of big.

I tried to squish it through my shirt, but I could not reach it on the place on my back. I started slapping it with a shoe! :LOL: Finally, I just ripped off my shirt and wiggled the shirt out on the floor. Out came the biggest camel spider you've ever seen. I'd never seen one before! They are the most ugly hairy things in the universe. It went crawling toward the sliding glass window in my studio and I yelled for Michael.

"OMG! Come in here! Bring the vacuum! This thing was biting me on my back."

He ran in and had a look at it stuck to the window in the bright light.

"Jesus! That was inside your shirt?"

He sucked it up with the vacuum and it hardly fit inside the nozzle. I still have the heebie-jeebies! :sick:
Click to expand...

I wonder how on earth it would have gotten in there. Anyway, they're not venomous, and apart from a nasty nip there is nothing more they can do to you. They do look pretty fearsome though. :)
 
Ticks have ruined the countryside here. We stomp ants that get into the house, without mercy, use boric acid and diatomacious earth to keep them out. Mosquitoes go. Anyone who takes pity on a black fly is a fool, ditto white-faced hornets. We don't care if they're in pain. Better them than us. Small spiders are okay if they set up shop in a corner; big ones we remove with the method brian describes. We don't like to kill them.
 
musket said:
Ticks have ruined the countryside here. We stomp ants that get into the house, without mercy, use boric acid and diatomacious earth to keep them out. Mosquitoes go. Anyone who takes pity on a black fly is a fool, ditto white-faced hornets. We don't care if they're in pain. Better them than us.
Click to expand...

And here I thought you were a nature lover... :)
 
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