Freaky, Weird and Messed-Up Bugs From God's Country

So, I've been living in Georgia for some time now. (2 years this month, can you believe it?!) The bugs here never cease to freak me out amaze me! Anyone who knows what kinds of bugs these are, or any interesting information about them, please let me know.

This is a bug I found right outside my front door when I was telling Jeremy goodbye before he left for work. It was about 11:30 pm. I liked him because of his loooooong antennae.

I woke up to this guy in the doorway between my kitchen and utility room. Because of his stillness and legs-up positioning, I thought he was dead.

Turns out he was just in the throes of death. When I scooped him up into my dustpan and it flipped him over, he started writhing. But he was on his way out. I tossed him outside.


This is a moth I found on my wall out back when I was tossing "mandibles" up there outside. I just thought it was really interesting, so I took a picture of it. Then my bratty neighbor kid killed it. He fed it to a spider.


Speaking of spiders...

This impressive specimen is the same kind of spider that I battled while I was blind and naked in my bathroom. In this case, I had just seen 2 roly-polies crawling around my house and I was on the phone with my dad lamenting the vast number of roly-polies that have been sneaking into my house. I was starting to explain to him that my house is the official roly-poly graveyard since they seem terribly fond of coming here to die. I walked back from the living room where I had seen roly-poly #2 to the kitchen where I had seen roly-poly #1, and looked where the roly-poly had been. Instead of a benign if somewhat annoying roly-poly, there was this huge, nasty guy waiting for me! I was so surprised that I screamed right into my poor dad's ear! (Sorry Dad, I do feel bad about that.) Well, I had seen him, so he couldn't be allowed to live. ::shudder:: Then, I had to figure out how I was going to do it! (Because, of course, I still haven't gotten around to buying that bug spray I promised myself I would pick up after the other spider attack...really, why do I procrastinate so much?) Ack!! I opted for the Clorox Ready Mop which was close at hand, and which kept the spider a good distance from me. This picture was taken after I had smashed the snot out of him! (I suppose that's kind of obvious, since one of his legs is lying next to him, and he's in a crumpled heap.) Ugh. Just looking at the thumbnail of this sends shivers up my spine! In fact, I have to type this in "Edit Html" mode so I can't see the picture! I have seen several of these in my house, and they make me nervous because they are quite large (easily 1 1/2" including the legs, maybe even bigger, but I am not getting close enough to one to measure). Again, I can't get close enough to one of these to figure out if it's a brown recluse or something else. If anyone knows, let me know...actually, I may not want to know. ...If it is a brown recluse anyway, because if that happens, I don't know if I could ever get close enough to kill one, even with a broom or mop. Ick!

So there you have it! Georgia's greatest and most fearsome critters. Hope you enjoyed looking at the strange creatures that God has used to make my life more interesting while I have been here.