Eeeeyuuuw!

Apparently, tis the season, for potato bugs. As much as I hate spiders, they are eminently preferable to these critters. When I stopped at The Filling Station for my Monday latte, the two cute little gals were still trembling from a close encounter with not one, not two, but three potato bugs. And this morning, as I left speech class and ambled down the ramp to the door, a nice guy warned me there was "a giant ant or something" in the pathway ahead, and sure enough, it was a potato bug. These things are like aliens, they are so weird. They do indeed look like giant wooden ants, with a bulbous brown torso and evil flesh-like head and legs. They click when the walk, even. And, they bite. I shudder just to think about it. Because they are so big, they make a huge mess if you step on them. My close encounter was one of those chilling moments that are best forgotten. I rolled over onto one in the night. It felt as if I had rolled over onto one of those cheap plastic combs, the ones with threads and shards of plastic still attached. I jumped up, turned on the light, and screamed. What to do? Well, I grabbed a glass from the bathroom sink, and corralled the bug under it. Then I took a piece of cardboard and slipped it underneath, and put it on the floor next to me. In the morning, I let it loose in the gutter out front, with the fervent hope some SUV would run over it. I've not seen any here in my snug little house, but the slugs seem to have a bead on me. One made its way through the dog door, the living room, the laundry room, the bathroom into my bedroom, where I got to step on it as I toddled off to the potty in the middle of the night. Yuck. I am sure HP has a need for these creatures, but more better they stay where HP intended them, and out of my house!