Share your most creepy insect encounters here.

Insects aren’t creepy.

House centipedes the size of my forearm crawling across our basement floor and under the sofa (which I was sitting on) at my parent’s place. A “family” of house centipedes crawling out from under the carpet when my bro and I were ripping it up. Those things be scurry!

Poking a spider (with a stick) that is covered with baby spiders. Seeing ALL of them climb off the dead mother, spreading out, like a glass of water that has been spilled. Gives me the creeps just thinking about.

Not a bug but a critter story. I went to the local organic market and bought some fresh salad fixings. As I was eating said salad for dinner, I felt something I thought was salad dressing dripping down my hand. I investigated to find that there was a tiny inchworm making its was down the back of my hand. I released the little thing outside because it was no threat to me in any way and killing it would have been a dick thing to do, but I wondered how many of it’s brothers and sisters I had already eaten.

This happened not long after we moved out to NZ not quite an insect but here goes…

I was wandering around the house and kept hearing a funny noise from my daughters room like plastic moving(remains of an advent calander on floor), so I kept bobbing my head in to investigate the noise…nothing until I waited at the door, combat style… and then I saw it!!

A long wiggly thing!!! Squirm across the floor, I screamed, Mark and Amber came running, but saw nothing and dismissed me saying I was imagining things!!!

But we moved the furniture and stuff just in case (they were humouring me!)

I decided to sort out Amber’s Christmas presents in her room and keep a watchful eye on things, it was only when I moved the curtain to stick something to Ambers desk then Amber saw it too!

A long wiggly thing that shot off behind her cupboard!

Cue the screaming for Mark!!

Mark being the hero that he is, watched as I pulled the cupboards out and investigated, he had a look and seeing nothing, said he’d had enough and went to have his toast!

I went to have another look, poking around with an umberella!

All of a sudden I spotted it.. A slimy long creature, with lighting reflexes I put a metal bowl over it and waited for Mark to come and pick it up!

Skillfully using a big book he scooped it up and we released it outside!

It turned out to be a skink a small lizard like creature we soon got used to seeing them around the house!

Mark has never let me forget as I described the thing as about a 2 foot long, when in truth it was only about 7cm long!!!

Maybe the time we were invited to dinner by a native family in Southern Venezuela and were offered rhinoceros beetle grubs, lightly roasted, as an appetizer?

Or perhaps the time we were in a rented cabin near the Red River and there was what we thought was a large plastic toy scorpion on the bathroom sink; well, we thought it was a toy until it moved.

And there was the time that I was camping near Angel Falls (aka Salto Angel) and I hung my socks up to air out over night only to discover that termites had built a nest inside them (and produced some secretion that turned them purple).

And I almost forgot the time I picked up my doormat in Tucson to shake the dust out of it and discovered seven black widow spiders under it. And the time I was camping without a tent and palmetto bugs decided to share my sleeping bag, and the time the eight-inch long centipede got out of its cage and scared the members of the Genealogical Society, and many more instances.

I like insects, but it seems they like me too. Sometimes I wish we had some sort of apartheid going, though, because my life seems to intersect a lot with A Bug’s Life.

insects aren’t creepy, people are creepy. Insects and spiders serve a purpose, many people serve no purpose at all it seems, except to be annoying. ;-)

Although one time about twenty years ago, I took a hit off a bong in this friends’ house and after I set it down, a big cockroach came crawling out. I was hoping that I was hallucinating. That was kind of nasty.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic – Your story reminds me of the time a kid in my elementary school started freaking out in the cafeteria because he looked at his partially eaten pile of spaghetti and saw half an earthworm on top of it.

We tried to tell him it was just extra protein, but he wouldn’t accept it. He ate peanut butter sandwiches the rest of the year.

There was the time I was taking a shower and an earwig fell off of the shower head when I was rinsing my hair. It bit me and held on in the middle of my back, right in that one spot you can’t reach. I detest earwigs.

Then there was the time I missed curfew and took off my shoes so my parents wouldn’t hear me walking in. I stepped in the slime trail of a gigantic slug, which I almost stepped on. I was freaked out beyond all reason.

OH! The time I opened a can of green beans and a live (I don’t know how) colorless spider crawled up to the top. **shudder**

Any time I encounter something with more than 8 legs. That is just wrong.

I seriously HATE ants. One time I went to the kitchen to go eat something then I saw the Twinkies box and I went to get one. Then I started eating it then out of curiosity I decided to look at the bottom of it so I flipped it and there was thousands of little red ants they were so tiny and redish pinkish looking. Up to this day I haven’t eaten a Twinkie ever again but I loved them ;-)
Damn ants!!!!!

@Tink1113 let’s be friends, I despise ants with a passion, too; I hate them even more than I hate wasps. We can start our own Organization for the Elimination of Ants Everywhere. We might need to work on the acronym, though.

@evelyns pet zebra – Im in!! ;-)

@Tink1113 you can not win against my vast ant-army stored in my stomach!

Ewwwww I would die ;(

We used to have a lot of house centipede’s at our old apartment. I woke up to one sleeping on the same pillow as my head. I freaked. I’d never seen such a hairy crawly thing.

I’m terrified of all bugs, so any encounter is creepy.
Trying to kill a flying roach while high was definitely one of the funniest ones.

Are leeches considered insects?

I was hiking in Laos and stopped moving for moment to catch my breath (it was around 100 degrees). As I was bent over with my hands on my knees, I thought “Why is the ground moving?”

About every 1/2 inch or so, a small, threadlike leech stuck up out of a tiny hole and waved back and forth like seaweed in a tidal pool. When I stopped moving, they all suddenly turned toward me…...and then started crawling rapidly toward me. The were everywhere in this boggy area! And Deet does not deter them. I freaked!!

I would run through an area until I could find a downed tree to jump up on and scrape them off my boots with a stick. Little bastards could bore through the leather boot tongue – when I stopped to cross a river and took my boots off, I poured a bootful out of each.

I’ve come to the realization that either everyone on fluther is a fantastic writer, capable of conveying an intense message through simple, five sentence stories stories, or that I am a giant pussy that gets the heebie-jeebies from reading this kinda stuff. Eep.

@syz, leeches aren’t insects, they are listed as belonging to the species sanguisuga. Their closest known relatives are politicians.

@evelyns_pet_zebra – I thought their closest relatives were ex-wives.

I appreciate ants and all they do, as long as they do it in Ant World and not in my place. When I was a student at the University of Miami I came home late from the library one night and plunked myself into bed only to leap up immediately in agony. Fire Ants had made their way into the room via the window and were all over the bed. They bit the fool out of my butt.

When I was working as a museum curator, Fire Ants tunneled under the slab of the building until they found a crack. Then they made their way up into the children’s play area and set up housekeeping under the rug. We found out when all of a sudden cute little kids were screaming about ant bites.

Right. This is gross. Make sure you’re not eating.

When I was about 4, I moved in with my guardian and her son to this upstairs apartment in a tall white duplex. It had a long flight of stairs running up the back entrance, I remember. Downstairs lived an old lady named Bea. She had a lot of cats, smelled like she was ill, was way obese, had stringy grey hair, wore a muumuu, etc. She had her bed in the living room. Just a strange person. One day, Guardian goes to make a neighborly visit of some sort to her and brings me along. I had already seen a few bugs crawling around on Bea’s floor, but nothing major. I didn’t like it, but what could I do? Well.

At some point during the visit, Bea noticed a roach crawling down from her bed and said something like, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to call the exterminator.” She pulled up the mattress to swat at it, but on top of the box spring were roaches everywhere. It must have literally been thousands. A couple of them, probably startled, flew up towards me. I screamed like a banshee and was sprinting out the door as fast as I could go and dashing up the stairs! ::still shuddering decades later::

Can you believe it, I got a whacking later on for “being rude”!

@aprilsimnel Did you crap yourself? I would have crapped myself.

@casheroo – I don’t think so. But I would’ve been well within rights!

Bed bugs. Nothing is creepier than waking up with one of those biting you. Every night after that you have to check the bed before you sleep, and you still lay awake wondering if they are there.

I was camping in a cabin. I had hung my favorite jacket on the corner of the bunk. When I woke up the next morning, there was a GIANT centipede on it. One of the ones with the exoskeliton. I was scarred.

@toomuchcoffee911 Actually, all centipedes have exoskeletons. It is part of what makes them arthropods, aka “bugs.”

<—feels sort of stupid

@Darwin You’re right; I meant the ones with really hard exoskeletons. But do centipedes count as bugs? Because don’t all insects have 6 legs?

Insects do have 6 legs, but the term “bug” (unless you are referring to the True Bugs, the Hemiptera) is commonly used for just about any creepy crawly, particularly those in the Phylum Arthropoda.

BTW, some people even refer to lobsters as “bugs.”

@Darwin – Oh, but lobsters are mega-tasty, crazy delicious bugs! Especially in melted garlic butter!

@aprilsimnel I agree wholeheartedly about lobsters, and many other crustaceans. Nonetheless, folks call them bugs.

BTW my father says that lightly roasted rhinoceros beetle grubs are crunchy on the outside and sweet and creamy on the inside. He quite liked them.