Sweet Mothra of Christ

Frank

that's inches and not centimeters...
I got like 3 of these flying around the house tonight. The other day one had decided to take her daytime nap in my record shelf and flew right into my face when I pulled out a box of 45s, I screamed like a little girl... I have all sorts of birds flying into our parlor and circle over my head before heading back out into the garden and just last night evicted another medium size tarantula from right in front our bedroom door but there's something weird about these huge fucking moths that just freaks me out...

dj_cityboy

we get these around here, their called Luna Moth's they appear to be roughly the same size....I have only ever seen two, but they are pretty freaky when you see them, first one I saw was at dusk and thought it was a bat, it landed right on the train bridge I was painting under with a buddy, my buddy said it was the first time he had ever seen one as well, few years back I was hiking @ Fundy National Park and the girlfriend and I saw one...it was a bit smaller in size but looked to be a bit of a brighter green then the one I saw previously it had a much longer pieces on the bottoms of its wings, pretty happy I aint got Tarantula's though..lol

The Luna Moth typically has a wingspan of 8???11.5 cm (3.1???4.5 in),[4] rarely exceeding 17.78 cm (7.00 in

parallax

that's inches and not centimeters...
I got like 3 of these flying around the house tonight. The other day one had decided to take her daytime nap in my record shelf and flew right into my face when I pulled out a box of 45s,[b] I screamed like a little girl .. I have all sorts of birds flying into our parlor and circle over my head before heading back out into the garden and just last night evicted another medium size tarantula from right in front our bedroom door but there's something weird about these huge fucking moths that just freaks me out...

Hahahahah!! That would be my reaction as well. Moths freak me out a bit, and one that size would send a chill up my spine if it were in my house.

Still, cockroaches freak me out the most.

:girlyman:

Electrode

dj_cityboy said:

pretty happy I aint got Tarantula's though..lol

Holy Hedorah, that would scare the shit out of me if I woke up looking eyes to eyes (x4) with one of those

Frank

That Luna Moth looks amazing. We used to get big green moths with a purple eye painted on each wing back in Guinea but you'd always only see them sitting on a wall or flying away, these giant brown ones fly right at you and maybe it's also because the wings move so slow and without the slightest sound that they freak me out like that... Tarantulas for some odd reason don't scare me but I'm a bit concerned stepping into one cause I'm always running around barefoot and we had about 6 or 7 of them within the past few months. A while back I had a small black snake under the kitchen sink and last week this enormous Tarantula Hawk flew into our living room and got more and more aggravated flying against closed windows. Apparently they rarely sting but it's supposed to be one of the most painful insect stings you can experience.

Horseleech

So no window screens in CR?

Frank

All the windows are screened, otherwise it would have been easy to get that Tarantula Hawk out of there. I'm keeping the doors to the courtyard and to the garden open at all times so the dogs can move around like they please and to get cross ventilation and that's why all of these animals come flying in. This week I even had one of these guys come in for a short visit, circled above the table and then landed right besides me on the floor too bad I didn't get the camera switched on in time so not my pic:



btw, unbelievably, I just met another tarantula in the hallway, heavy rain drives them into the houses from what I understand and it's been raining all afternoon.

walter_chron

Frank said:

Tarantula Hawk

had to google, and, yeah fuck that.

My parents have, all of a sudden, got a grip of fucking scorpions around their house for some reason. This is after never really seeing them in like 25 years living in Phoenix. Crazy! They look to me like they're the AZ bark scorpion, too, the most venomous kind in the state. My dad's been going out before bed and hunts them in the backyard with a black light n a shoe lol. Usually gets a couple a night, sometime 7 or 8. A couple weeks ago he said he found one with like 16 babies on it's back!!

Jimster

We were on holiday last week and the apartment was spotless with wooden floors. But I dropped something under the bed, and when lifting the side of the sheet to take a look, saw what I thought was a curled-up leaf, right under the middle of the bed.

I scooped it out from under there with a flip flop. It was an upturned dead cockroach, about the size of an adult thumb. I flushed it double-quick. No other sightings were encountered. Yard had ultrasonics internally and lizards and geckos externally to keep dem shits controlled.

I've not told the Mrs, she wouldn't have slept a wink all week.

Jimster

b/w

This badbwoy was on our garage last month. Never seen one before, but I'm from Widnes where white dog shit is exotic.



Probs about 4"

And the moth.

CratesGatsby

Frank - 01 August 2013 11:13 PM
Tarantula Hawk


had to google, and, yeah fuck that.

^^^ same & agreed.

We got mosquitoes, and things that eat them. Dragonfly's are about as big as it gets up here. Bats too. Last night my friends kids where over at dusk. I was showing them the trick of throwing a small rock straight up in the air and watching the bats do a fly by thinking the rock might be dinner. Ended up being a frenzy of dive bombing bats, hailing rocks and screaming kids.

Respect tho for people who can handle crazy big insects.

JectWon

we get these around here, their called Luna Moth's they appear to be roughly the same size....I have only ever seen two, but they are pretty freaky when you see them, first one I saw was at dusk and thought it was a bat, it landed right on the train bridge I was painting under with a buddy, my buddy said it was the first time he had ever seen one as well, few years back I was hiking @ Fundy National Park and the girlfriend and I saw one...it was a bit smaller in size but looked to be a bit of a brighter green then the one I saw previously it had a much longer pieces on the bottoms of its wings, pretty happy I aint got Tarantula's though..lol

The Luna Moth typically has a wingspan of 8???11.5 cm (3.1???4.5 in),[4] rarely exceeding 17.78 cm (7.00 in

College days circa 2003. I drunkenly left the bathroom window open and the bathroom light on. Passed out. Woke up the next morning with one of those fuckers hanging out on my bathroom wall. It was so damn big that I honestly thought it was some type of weird bird. Realized it's actually just a gigantic moth and decided I'm just going to turn the lights off, leave the window open, close the bathroom door and turn my outside light on in the hopes that it leaves tonight. I gave that fucker the run of the bathroom for the entire day...game recognize game and that thing was terrifying and beautiful.

Reynaldo

About as big as we get in norcal:

Ponderosa pine borer. They can make a loud thud when they fly into your screens/windows at night. And they make a high-pitched squeal when you touch them.

Frank

A few years back in Sierra Leone we stayed at this beach house and were chilling on the terrace when I went inside to get more beer. I didn;t turn the lights on in an effort to not attract too many mosquitoes when I felt a sharp pain in my left little toe. When I lifted up my foot with a loud "ouch", I felt something hanging onto it. I shook my foot wildly and saw something fly across the room and smash into the wall with a loud thud, I immediately grabbed the camera and took this picture:


Looks like he's saying "there's more where that came from"...


One day at our house in Guinea, one of the dogs dragged this in from the garden:



I told my wife to put her foot next to it so there's a scale to the massive size of this alien looking creature:



Years later, I find this on Wikipedia: "Belostomatidae is a family of insects in the order Hemiptera, known as giant water bugs or colloquially as toe-biters... ...Their bite is considered one of the most painful that can be inflicted by any insect (the Schmidt sting pain index excludes insects other than Hymenoptera), however, though excruciatingly painful, it is of no medical significance... ...Occasionally when encountered by a larger predator, such as a human, they have been known to "play dead" and emit a fluid from their anus. Due to this they are assumed dead by humans only to later "come alive" with painful results."

Apparently they are considered a delicacy in Thailand:







I only hope I'll never get to meet a bullet ant which are pretty common here in Costa Rica:

Wikipedia: "The pain caused by this insect's sting is purported to be greater than that of any other Hymenopteran, and is ranked as the most painful according to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, given a "4+" rating, above the tarantula hawk wasp and, according to some victims, equal to being shot, hence the name of the insect. It is described as causing "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours".



"The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior.[7] The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural sedative and then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made out of leaves (which resembles a large oven mitt), stinger facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, a boy slips the glove onto his hand. The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full ten minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed because of the ant venom, and he may shake uncontrollably for days. The only "protection" provided is a coating of charcoal on the hands, supposedly to confuse the ants and inhibit their stinging. To fully complete the initiation, however, the boys must go through the ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several months or even years."

rootlesscosmo

fuck this thread.

LaserWolf

CratesGatsby said:

Frank - 01 August 2013 11:13 PM
Tarantula Hawk


had to google, and, yeah fuck that.

^^^ same & agreed.

:freeway:


:walk_away_son:

Electrode

Frank said:

The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior.

I saw that on TV (Ripley's Believe It Or Not, I think) one time. The female version of the initiation rite is getting hair plucked out lock by lock.

CratesGatsby

Shit is funny, I basically spent an hour at work falling down the wiki rabbit hole Taranchala Hawk led me on, basically end up on that picture of that F^$kin! bullet ant glove! Went out for errands. Get back, Franks comes with the bug bite lesson review and the glove....

fuck this thread.

records- picked this up for a couple bucks when out, little open break ther...

JectWon

Frank said:

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that.

ppadilha

I only hope I'll never get to meet a bullet ant which are pretty common here in Costa Rica:

Wikipedia: "The pain caused by this insect's sting is purported to be greater than that of any other Hymenopteran, and is ranked as the most painful according to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, given a "4+" rating, above the tarantula hawk wasp and, according to some victims, equal to being shot, hence the name of the insect. It is described as causing "waves of burning, throbbing, all-consuming pain that continues unabated for up to 24 hours".



"The Satere-Mawe people of Brazil use intentional bullet ant stings as part of their initiation rites to become a warrior.[7] The ants are first rendered unconscious by submerging them in a natural sedative and then hundreds of them are woven into a glove made out of leaves (which resembles a large oven mitt), stinger facing inward. When the ants regain consciousness, a boy slips the glove onto his hand. The goal of this initiation rite is to keep the glove on for a full ten minutes. When finished, the boy's hand and part of his arm are temporarily paralyzed because of the ant venom, and he may shake uncontrollably for days. The only "protection" provided is a coating of charcoal on the hands, supposedly to confuse the ants and inhibit their stinging. To fully complete the initiation, however, the boys must go through the ordeal a total of 20 times over the course of several months or even years."

:hard_as_fuck:

here's video of a guy showing one off to me:



the quality is not the best (neither is the filming) so you can't make it out on the stick he's holding, but that ant is HUGE. I don't remember if it was this one or another species that has massive jaws, the guy told me sometimes they'll bite their machetes so hard their jaws will slip and they go flying backwards. I don't know if they are as aggressive as fire ants though, those also hurt like hell when they bite.

LaserWolf

dj_cityboy

rootlesscosmo said:

fuck this thread.

yeah this shit got a bit outta control for me...not a fan of fuckin bugs at all...I scream like a girl if a spider touches me...I don't get down with cucaracha's or earwigs and shit..

suriously..need I say it

fejmelba

I am so glad my only worry is livin 8 meters below sea level.
fuck those big buggs.

username

Frank, someone (from Africa) put a voodoo curse on you and sent you these moths.
These are animal spirits who want to listen to the afro funk you got in Africa.

Do not kill these moths or you will die a sudden and unexpected death.