vermin

[eclectica]

http://ppdl.org/dd/images/centipede_sm.jpeg <--centipede

What kind of animals or things do you find to be creepy? I find centipedes to be the scariest of the vermin. I only see them in brick houses and they live inside the walls. They seem to be active at night and run really fast. I see big roaches in warm places, and they can even fly small distances too. When I was younger it was spiders that scared me the most, but now living in a city I don't see them as much as the roaches and the centipedes.

There are other groups of vermin such as snakes, and then mice and rats. The rats don't bother me and look cute. But something creeps me about them when they move fast. There must be something about their fast movements that makes them seem repulsive. If something moves fast then we sense danger. Slugs and snakes move slowly and are creepy for a different reason.

Many of these vermin are competitors to our food or dangerous, but we don't eat them ourselves. I think a lot of what we find repulsive or creepy is learned as well.

My wife growing up as a child in Senegal got worms and at one point was given medicine to get rid of them. They then crawled out of her mouth and were like spaghetti. Since that she has found worms and snakes repulsive, and she refuses to even look at them. Sometimes a cluster of things which are not even worms can look repulsive to her. For example, a cluster of grapes can remind her of a collection of worms or maggots.

http://www.trefethen.com/media/p1/050301.jpg <--Is this creepy?

The reaction to things which are grotesque and creepy can give us goosebumps. It must be an animal reaction that's still working despite evolution. Some people get it more than others. I know someone who said he got goosebumps and the hair stood up on his arms when he saw the second plane hit the Twin Towers. I guess it comes from some kind of threat response. Cats get it whenever they get into fights, and it makes them appear bigger or puffed up because their hair stands up. You can see it on their tails.

Some music gives me goosebumps and chills when I listen to it. Other types of music make me feel warm, like the feeling from drinking my first beer.

[Dollar_Girl]

i find maggots absolutely repulsive. When i was younger i had a habbit of not eating my school lunch, and leaving it in my bag. In australia the weather is usually ALWAYS warm and humid, providing ideal conditions for maggots. Anyway, when i didn't eat my lunch, i'd forget about it, until oneday while diging through my bag for a sharpener or pencil or something, i'd put my hand in a big pile of maggots that had infested my old ham sandwhich. It was repulsive.

Maggots are usually found in large clusters. I once woke up and found a SINGLE maggot next to me in my bed. I nearly died from the repulsion. I don't know where it came from, because there was no other maggots anywhere, and i had no old food in my bedroom. But from that day, before i went to bed, i checked all my sheets for maggots. I did that for months after THE incident. I still scan my room for maggots. Sometims i will see a small white object and i will think it is moving, and i can feel the panic start setting in, until i realise it is only a tiny piece of paper or something.

Rice reminds me of maggots.

Some people have pinky toes that look like fat bloated maggots.

Some penises look like maggots.

I particularly hate maggots when they are in a hot humid plastic bag, going crazy over juices sweated from rotting meat.

I have read that sterile maggots can be used to eat away rotting infected flesh, and thus save people losing limbs. I then put myself in that situation, having maggots put in me, to eat my flesh. I think to myself... katarina.. is it worth it? is the limb worth it? and then i think about what a fucking idiot i am to even ask that... ofcourse saving a limb is worth it. But that is how disgusting i think maggots are.

I agree centipedes are horrible. In australia, we have these really massive ones. If you take your hand and straighten it... we have fluro red ones that are longer than the distance from the end of your palm, to the tip of your finger. Their legs are a plastic brown colour. They are horrible. Like something out of a horror movie.

I also dispite cockroaches, and again, queensland conditions are ideal for cockroach breeding. They LOVE heat and humidity, and you can be the CLEANEST motherfucker in queensland, and you will still have roaches. heaps of them. These roaches fly... and i ain't talking short flutters of the wings... i mean they FLY. I once saw a roach in my room and i started running away in fear, when i realised it was flying after me, and it landed on me and i started doing the "omg there is a cockroach on me" dance. It was horrific. It was like it singled me out and flew after me because it new i was scared. Also i have read roaches have two brains... one in the arse. That is why they are so quick. The can live off a single finger print for a week. ANything that eats finger prints is creepy.

A favourite cockroach memory of mine is of primary school friend... lets just say her family weren't too hygenic. Anyway, one day her dad offered me toast... and i being an innocent toast lover agreed... (the fact that they used the same sink of water to wash dishes for over 2 weeks should have warned me against eating there). Anyway, when he pulled out the butter from the cupboard, it was COVERED in roaches... and i watched him flick each roach off with his finger until they were scattered on the floor, then i watched him take a knife and smear the bread with the butter and hand me the plate with a smile.

Also once on my birthday, i was eating at a chinese restraunt, and there was a roach in my soup. At first i thought it was a chinese vegetable, but under closer inspection, it was indeed a roach.

Australia is a strange country. Maggots and roaches are part of daily life. SO many flies... so many maggots... so many dead splattered kangaroo corpses on the road infested with fly larvae.

what's a girl to do.

also cane toads... hollyshit do i find cane toads horrible. When i was in Cairns, which is caintoad country, i opened the door of my room, and there were HUNDREDS OF THEM!!! i slammed the door and refused to go out. it gave me hte creeps.

[eclectica]

roaches have two brains... one in the arse.

lol, so do I

Roaches seem to be attracted to oil and grease, which puts them comfortably in the Chinese restaurant. I think centipedes are benovolent, like spiders, because they hunt other vermin like roaches.

Living in a cold climate limits the amount of vermin, though a big city and its underground passages gives a unique habitat to those special animals, which in New York is mainly roaches and rats.

The giant roaches in New York are always in places where it is warm. One time I was working in a manhole over the subway, which is warm from the air conditioning of the trains expelling their heat. It was filled with the giant roaches and I even saw one molting, with a white color before its new skin oxidized. I said: Yo White boy what you be doing here?

[eclectica]

Every fly was at one point a maggot but you don't see as many maggots as you do flies. I see more maggots in rural areas on dead animals. Sometimes they make the fur move on the dead animal. Normally in animals the baby version is cuter than the adult version, but not so in butterflies. I'm not sure if the maggot is cuter or the fly is cuter.