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Want to Win $500? Tell Us YOUR Creepy or Funny Bug Story…

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This post may contain affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.

Janice and I don’t usually sit around laughing about bugs (even thinking too long about them makes us squirm.)

But when the folks at Raid® asked us to host a fabulous giveaway for TWO $500 Walmart Gift Cards, we decided we’d open up and laugh about our phobias.

So here’s the deal… We’re going to pick TWO winners and give them each a $500 Walmart Gift Card!

To get in the draw, just tell us a funny or creepy bug story that happened to you.

You can blog your #RaidBugStory and share the link in a comment or tell the whole story in a comment.

I’ll include the giveaway details below, first let me get the story-telling going…

The Night of the Hawaiian Cockroaches

My full-fledge phobia of bugs began one sunny summer morning when I was nine years old. I woke, rolled over, opened my eyes and right there before me — on my pillow — was an ugly black spider. (He wasn’t big, but he was ugly.)

I screamed. I jumped up and screamed some more. I didn’t stop screaming for a long time. And inside my mind, I kept screaming for years.

(Clearly this response to a spider was not normal for a nine year old. Looking back now as an adult, I understand that my weird worries about bugs and my other paralyzing anxieties weren’t typical kid stuff, but that’s a whole lot of other stories… So back to this one…)

That wretched spider who snuck onto my pillow triggered years of true fear and panic over spiders and other creepy crawlers. My poor mother would have to perform nightly OCD rituals on my behalf of spider searches to ensure none could invade my space again.

If I saw a spider, even in daylight nowhere near my bed, I’d be unable to sleep properly for nights.

I never overcame my phobia of bugs, but it did lessen somewhat as I grew through my teen years.

Until… one night in Hawaii, my space was invaded by not one bug, but thousands!

Janice and I were sixteen year old girls on the final night of a two-week family vacation in Hawaii. Our family’s timeshare condo stay was up and we had to spend the last night in a hotel. Our father booked us a suite in mid-range hotel a block away.

At 10 pm, our parents went to sleep and we stayed up to cram in a week’s worth of homework. The lights were off except for one lamp to light our books.

At 11 pm, I went to the bathroom, turned on the light and started to wash my face. But as I turned on the tap, I noticed a ton of little bugs in the sink basin. My body tensed, I tried to stay calm and grabbed some tissue and starting trying to kill them.

But I soon realized it was futile. They were everywhere!

I ran out of the bathroom and in muffled screams tried to tell Janice what I saw. I then went to the kitchen, switched on the light and almost passed out from panic as I saw a sight I could never even have imagined.

The floors and walls were alive with swarms of baby cockroaches. Apparently equally panicked by the unexpected light, the evil insects ran in all directions and I screamed like a teenage girl in a bad horror film. Our mother was instantly awake and at my side trying desperately to quiet me so I wouldn’t wake my father. (He wouldn’t have been as sympathetic.)

Our mom turned on the light in the living room and revealed hundreds more on the walls.

I was insane with panic. I hated Hawaii and I hated those cockroaches and I demanded we go to the airport that moment and wait for our flight home to a land where I’d never even seen a cockroach in my 16 years of life.

I imagine Janice was freaking out too, but all I can remember is my own desperate need to get out of Hawaii. Immediately.

Our mom phoned the front-desk, told them of the cockroach infestation and asked that they find us another room. The clerk agreed, we gathered our bags and went to the new room.

But when we opened the door, we saw them run — Cockroaches fleeing the light.

The embarrassed staff apologized and let us check over half-a-dozen rooms, but with each door we opened, we saw something scurry out of site. Some rooms weren’t as bad as others, but none were bug free.

Janice and I were horrified and crying. We begged our mom to get us off this infested Island. But with our father asleep, our options were limited. We couldn’t switch hotels and we couldn’t make a run for the airport.

Instead, we chose the room with the fewest signs of roaches, turned on all the lights and pulled the beds away from the walls.

When the night was finally over, we told my father who, as expected, thought it was mildly humorous, but had a serious talk with the hotel staff.

They claimed the problem was that some of the units in the building were privately owned and thus not required to be part of the routine pest control program. It seemed that if even one room became infested with the bugs, they spread like sin.

The hotel manager assured us they’d do their best to solve the problem, but obviously I would never be back! (In fact it was years before I would even go back to Hawaii at all.)

We finally caught a cab and headed — hours early — to the airport. I couldn’t wait to be home in Vancouver, Canada, Land of the Mostly-Cockroach-Free!

(Okay, well lots of homes in Canada likely do have cockroaches, but I’ve never seen any here and I’m working hard to keep it that way.)

How To Win One of Two $500 Walmart Gift Cards

To enter to win just tell us a funny or creepy bug story that happened to you. You can blog your story and share the link in a comment or tell the whole story in a comment.

And we don’t usually allow bonus entries, but this time, we’re weakening…

For additional entries, you can tweet, post on Facebook and/or post on your Blog telling your friends about this bug inspired giveaway. Just leave additional comments with the links to your tweet, facebook post and/or blog post. Tweets

should include hashtag #RaidBugStory

Each comment will be included as an entry in our random draw.

This giveaway is open to both US and Canadian shipping addresses and is void where prohibited. Be sure to check out our site’s Terms and Conditions of Use for more information.

QUICK… This ends soon…

We’ll accept entries through Tuesday, May 3rd and we’ll announce the lucky winners on Wednesday, May 4th.

Thanks to our Sponsors


Build a Bug Barrier

Raid Max® Bug Barrier creates a barricade around your home preventing 8 different types of insects from coming indoors.

 

Written by Susan Carraretto, Mom Blogger and 5 Minutes For Mom Co-Founder
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996 Comments

  1. This is ongoing presently. About 3 weeks, I was in bed and lights were off, only my TV and my tablet was light. I saw a shadow of legs on my tablet and look to my left, spased out, knock it off, jump out of bed, I’m hurt, have to find spider and kill it, lights on. I’m on a mission, it’s a fiddle back, after seemingly taking forever because it was late. Few weeks later, I walk outside, I notice something balled in a corner with a globe on its back, not globe, baby sack, I thought it was dead, wrong, I finally get it in a paper towel, envelope, plastic bag and then dumpster, eggs hadn’t hatched thank God, then just Tuesday, my daughter in law drops off my granddaughter and she’s stomping on the ground and I ask what she’s killing, a mama and her babies and when I saw how big the mother was, well I stomped on it and the crunching sound alerted me it was dead. Why, as I greeted the daddy long at my door this morning. I’m seeing and feeling spiders everywhere, I’m praying it goes away and I’m waiting for my pepper mint oil. Thought I’d share, even though it’s 2023 and this post was dated back 2011, mother’s day. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2011, so seeing this made me respond because I’m still here, through God’s Grace.

    Reply

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  3. If it’s any encouragement, we went to Hawaii several times and only saw one bug – plus a ton of ants at a red dirt beach in Maui. (Ants, while being irritating, are nice and small 🙂 ).

    Hopefully, you’ve had a more positive experience in Hawaii, as it IS full of such wonderful things, including the lovely plumeria, the coolest trees around, and those uber comfortable Hawaiian muumuu dresses :).

    Thanks again for such a fun story!

    Reply

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  5. @TOIVOAFND is giving away a free Macbook Air if they make into the top 100 followers. Follow on Twitter to win — spreading awareness about microfinance and how it aids in alleviating poverty!

    Reply

  6. I was outside with my 2 1/2 daughter, and a yellow jacket I was watching on a leaf close by suddenly flew directly at me. I FREAKED OUT and asked my daughter if there was a bug on mommy and she said ” Yeah mommy right there” so I start my crazy dance trying to get this bug off I can’t see…so I asked her again, if the bug was on mommy and where, and again she said yes and pointed to my shoulder so I looked down and I hear this contagious giggle and at the moment I realized there was nothing there, ever.

    Reply

  7. I live in Hawaii, and if you have seen the centipedes out here, you know they are not pleasant! I was 7 months pregnant, typing away on my laptop and one came creepy crawling at me full speed and I got up to run away, it crawled IN my laptop, yes in where it was broken and a part fell off! and of course my husband was no any help, being the scaredy cat he was, so here i was 7 months pregnant and huge, putting on gardening gloves to put my laptop outside so that the bug could crawl back out… the next day I brought the laptop back in and never saw another sign of the centipede so hopefully he left… especially since im still using the same laptop. oh boy!

    Reply

  8. My son came home from a sleep over with a story. While sleeping on the couch in his friends living room, he woke up feeling as if he had to blow his nose. He got a tissue, and when he blew his nose he was surprised to find a creepy, crawly critter accompanying his nasal mucus. Totally gross!

    Reply

  9. I had my doors open one day and I saw a big bug crawl in. I coldn’t find it and I had no intention of going to bed until I found it. So I basically took everything in my house apart until I found it. I chased it around the rooms with a shoe. After about two hours I finally killed it. I probably lost ten pounds that day!

    Reply

  12. My funny bug story is from when my family moved to Las Vegas….well, I had never been around cockroaches before….and one night I left some chips outside on our patio table. I opened the door to let my dog out and I heard a giant ‘CRUNCH!’, and I was like what they heck?! I turned on the light to reveal possibly hundred of cockroaches that were eating our leftovers!!! They were so load you could hear them chewing up the food. I also found out later that they’re very difficult to kill with bug spray so I would go out every night and take a 2 X 4 and crush them on the fence, disgusting!!!

    Reply

  13. I was showering one night and a really BIG roach fell down the shower curtain and landed on my tush. It was so frightning!

    Reply

  14. One of my earliest memories is of my mom and me standing in the middle of her bed clutching each other in horror. I’m about 6, and we are pointing at a horrible roach. And who are we frantically gesturing to with our outstretched pointer fingers and beseeching with our screeching yellers? It’s my 4 year old brother, Michael. Yes, he was our go-to-guy when it came to bugs. As you can probably guess, I’ve grown up to be terrified of bugs and Michael is an entomologist. Just kidding. He’s a regular guy and he’s not scared to get rid of a bug now and again.

    Reply

  18. My college roommate took me to a fancy Chinese restaurant in Manhattan and we ordered Moo Shu Pork. I came with a huge roach mixed in. The worst part was she wasn’t phased at all, she just sent it back and kept eating.

    Reply

  19. My family loves my meat loaf. Last time I made it, I dumped a bag of breadcrumbs into the meaty mix. Two HUGE bugs–I have no idea what they were, but I swear they wore saddles–squiggled around the hamburger. I was afraid to get NEAR the bowl, but I had to dump it–outside. I’m sure it helped my compost pile, but it didn’t help feed us our favorite meal.

    My disappointed fam ate fast-food that night.

    Reply

  20. When I was first married (100 years ago it seems like) we lived in an apartment that was connected to some pretty dirty folks. We started off by being invaded by mutant ants that took over our kitchen completely – we tried everything we could think of – the apartment people tried everything – the army marched on…after the ants tried (successfully) to get into our fridge – it was no more Mrs. Nice Newlywed. I bought some Raid, and blasted them all to kingdom come, whenever I saw one. We usually had a bottle on hand after that. Another time, in the same apartment, I opened a cupboard and saw a huge cockroach (what I thought it was anyway)…I composed a letter to the management – had enough bugs at this point, informing them that I was turning them into the health department, etc. My husband came home that night and said “Okay, where is your roach?”…when he opened the cupboard, he just laughed and laughed. “Honey”, he said…”You may want to rethink your letter…don’t think that the state is going to do anything about that giant earwig you have there.” Guess my bug identification skills weren’t quite up to par!

    Reply

  21. I had recently moved to Georgia from the North East. I had never heard of a Palmetto bug but I quickly learned that this huge cockroach like bug not only were disgusting but the also flew. One night while watching t.v in our apartment I looked down to see one of these huge bugs scurry out from underneath the couch I was sitting on. At first my scream was so intense it was silent, then finally the most blood curdling scream came from my mouth. My husband ran to my rescue with a shot gun. Once he realized I was not in any real danger he calmly walked away and came back with some raid. I learned that night to make sure I have a steady stock of raid in my house. Thankfully now that we live in our house and no longer rent, we have the bugs under control.

    Reply

  22. When I was about 19 years old I worked in a travel agency. Some days I would go out at lunch time to buy something to eat from the small grocery store next door. One day, they had a new batch of beautiful looking nectarines so I scooped one up and paid for it.
    I went back to the office and started to eat my lunch. Finally I got to the nectarine and after giving it a wash I bit into it. Oh it was juicy yum!! I put it down on my desk for a second and was talking to my colleague. All of a sudden at the exact same time, we both noticed something MOVING inside the stone which was split open!! There were legs sticking out of it and kicking!! We both jumped up and were screaming, both completely terrified!!
    We ran and enlisted the help of the guys from the butcher shop a couple of doors away and they took it to the store and used a meat cleaver to split it open!! Inside was an UGLY 3 or 4 inch tropical looking bug creature THING !!! OMG it still gives me the jitters now thinking about it !!!
    A very scary experience for me. I gotta say, I don’t eat nectarines anymore LOL

    Reply

  23. Which to choose? There are so many!
    I guess I’ll go with the open house story. We moved to Alabama and bought our first house. We scrubbed and painted and did all sorts of things to improve the house, then had an open house for co-workers. About half-way through the party, a guest said, hey, who’s that? He pointed to our ceiling. A big palmetto bug (the first I’D seen the whole time in the state) was checking things out from above. Needless to say, the party moved to the other room and some killing began. I hate those bugs!

    Reply

  24. My son will not be thrilled that I shared this with you now that he is 13, but he will get over it, lol. When he was a wee bitty baby (crawling age) he had the worst case of baby breath for a time. And when I say bad baby breath I mean rancid. I could not for the life of me figure out the cause nor could his pediatrician. One day I saw something stuck between his two front teeth. It looked like the hard candy shell of a M&M candy. “That’s odd” I thought. There weren’t any candies laying around.

    Later on I spied him eating an M&M off the floor. I ran over to discover that it wasn’t an M&M. It was ladybugs. He must’ve thought they were mobile candies because he was eating them. Apparently lady bugs emit a stinky gas when crushed which explains his bad baby breath. Nasty story, but entirely true much to my 13 year old’s chagrin. 🙂

    Reply

  27. We went on vacation last year and had been driving all day long and decided to crash at what we thought was a nice looking hotel. We got settled in and unpacked and I decided to take a shower. As I entered the bath there was a 2″ cockroach crawling up the bathroom wall! We packed up and demanded a refund and left

    ardy22 at earthlink dot net

    Reply

  28. I moved in to this old house which was loaded with those big roaches (called waterbugs I think). One night I was in bed, half awake, and felt my finger felt funny. I woke up all the way and looked to see a giant waterbug gnawing on my finger!

    Reply

  29. My bug story happened a few years ago. My daughter was about 7 and she was out on my deck doing a craft in the summer. She came running inside saying there was a giant big on the deck. I think I rolled my eyes and did not believe her. I thought how big could it be? I went out and I saw a bug about an inch and a half long, white with black spots. I got creeped out! Then I put my mommy hat on and told her we should put it in her bug box. Of course I had to catch it. She wanted no part. I tried to catch it and yellow Goo came our of it.(defense mechanism I later found out) and I thought I killed it. I captured it and then figured out it was 2 BUGS MATING! We kept them for an hour or so and then opened the cage so they could leave. The boy left but the girl stayed to LAY HER EGGS in our trap! crazy. We later found out it was a leopard moth. I have never seen one before or since.

    Reply

  30. We used to live in this horrible house that probably had every bug infestation imaginable (maybe some new ones too!) It was temporary house due to a job my husband had. There were carpet beetles in the old 70s style carpets and there were even carpets in the bathroom. One day I found them in bed with me! My husband called to complain and they came in and ripped out the carpets and fumigated the place. It had to have been the worst place i’ve ever lived in and don’t know how people live in those conditions. If offered temporary housing due to a job, check to make sure there aren’t going to be a million other things living there with you first!

    Reply

  31. I remember us living in Florida, we had the BIGGEST COCKROACH ever seen in my house..I called my neighbor and told her that we were being invaded and something was wrong with the water in Florida…when she explained to me about Palmetto bugs..oops.

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  32. Oh eww! I loathe bugs. I am definatley not into creepy crawly things but I had a run in a few weeks ago! We were on vacation in PA and woke up to a few ants in our room on the air conditioner, OK I jumped and screamed and hubby came to the rescue and killed them all! We complained and were transferred to another “better room” with a jacuzzi and the works! AWESOME. We enjoyed our nite, watched TV and fell asleep. We woke up the next morning to a ROOM FULL of ants! on the jacuzzi, on our bed(only like 5 of them blah!) and the baby had on on her head I thought I was gonna flip. We were so sceeved out that we left a day early and got a refund! OMG This wasnt a regular hotel, we paid good money for it ! And that ladies is my disgusted and grossed out bug story…

    Reply

  33. Bugs are fine its the Spiders that I can’t stand…A couple of years ago when we moved into our new house someone had left a pile of the mowed grass. So I decided to go and take care of this pile so it wont make our yard look bad, so off I went digging, shoveling, picking up! It was moldy and spiders everywhere so I screamed throw the grass down and the shovel and left this job for my husband. They were not just little spiders they were BIG Hobo Spiders. (I’m getting chills just telling you the story) Not only did my husband get rid of the pile they didn’t like the outside warm weather so they started to come and enjoy the inside. And I was the only one that always found these BIG Hobo Spiders, they loved the laundry room…The one that I can remember that was the BIGGEST that we found, was on the wall on our way up the stairs and I of course was the one that saw it so off I screamed for my husband and said, “LOOK!” Holy Crap that is HUGE he said! So instead of just killing it right then he caught it and messed around with it and throw it in the toilet. We thought it would of drowned but I’m not even kidding you but this spider was the size of a silver dollar and he was running on top of the water. Seeing a spider run on water is just nasty so off it was flushed, I didn’t want to see anymore of these spiders, So off I called the bug doctor and he came and sprayed the inside & outside of the house. YAHOO! (knock on wood) but we haven’t seen those nasty spiders yet..Will see when Summer comes…
    But all I got to say: Dear, Hobo Spiders stay out of my house and I wont kill you.

    Reply

  36. I was in Uganda with my mom. Friends put us at a home of their friend. We were exhausted from the long flight over and just wanted to get in our beds. We fell asleep and suddenly almost simultaneously we jumped out bed, slapping ourselves all over as we were bitten by bed bugs. They were covering both of us. We stood smashing them on each other as we were saying Nooooooo owie ow. Finally they stopped, we got calmed down and laid back down. Just as we were calm and drifting back to sleep it happened again. About the 5th time of this I sat on the edge of the bed crying because I was so tired and totally covered in bites. We just sat up until morning then grabbed our stuff and went to a guest house and slept. I will never, ever take for granted the little ditty I learned as a child, Night, night, sleep tight, Don’t let the bed bugs bite !!

    Reply

  39. I was renting an apartment and we had a massive cockroach that was very quick. When we tried to step on it we heard it just laugh and walk away. It escaped, presumably to share its survival technique with its friends.

    Reply

  40. My husband and I took a romantic weekend trip to a cabin in Gatlinburg, Tn. After a great evening, I went to a take a shower the next morning. When I went to turn on the shower I saw there was a SCORPION!!!! in the bathtub!! I’ve always hated scorpions and never saw them in person. I’m from Michigan and always thought they lived in the dessert. I made my husband kill it was a kitchen spatula. When I looked up the scorpion online it said I was “lucky” to see them in Tennesee. They are noctural – so the rest of my stay I was scared to get out of bed at night, for fear the floor was swarming with scorpions.

    Reply

  41. when we moved into our 1st house 13 years ago, we were so excited, being new homeowners. After unpacking all boxes & getting all furniture situated we sat down to watch a movie. I saw something run across the floor, I asked my husband if he just saw that? he said “no, you’re just seeing things because the movie is a bit scary.” 10 minutes later I see it again….he saw it too, it went under the entertainment center, he said it was just a spider, i told him it was not, it was bigger & faster than a spider! I do NOT like creepy crawly anything, i don’t care if I am a million times bigger than them, bugs just freak me out! Well it never came back out from the entertainment center, i was at ease…for the time being. The next morning I woke up and was heading to the restroom, that same “creature” crossed my path in the hallway, i turned on the lights and there it was ……A CENTIPEDE!!! EEEUUUWWW!!!! I walked quietly & carefully to the kitchen, grabbed a freezer bag & actually had the nerve to capture this disgusting bug with millions of legs that was VERY, very fast. I was able to “zip” it up & let my heartbeat get back to normal. I then attached a note to the bag for my husband that said “It’s either me or the bugs, take your choice!!” He got home & saw the note & decided to call in the Exterminators, we’ve never seen one since, thank goodness! But the last couple years we have been saving money by doing the exterminating ourselves with the one & only “RAID!”

    Reply

  42. I HATE bugs!! When I first got married we moved into an apartment. I had always lived in a house and didn’t know what can happen in apartments with BUGS. We moved into this apartment and in the middle of the first night I woke up thirsty. I flipped on the kitchen light and there were BUGS everywhere. I started screamimg, woke my husband up and told him
    I was not living in this place. It was too late to go to a hotel so I went and sat in the car until daylight and then marched into the rental office and gave a piece of my mind. They bombed our apartment and as soon as we could save a down payment on a house, we were out of there.

    Reply

  45. I purchased a rental house several years ago and tenants have almost always been very good about keeping it clean. That wasn’t the case with one family. Apparently they liked to collect aluminum cans from dumpsters and off the streets and save them inside the house. They were only there about 6 months but when they left it was a disaster!
    There was an incredible amount of grunge left behind and thousands of cockroaches. My son and adult grandson went with me to assess the work that needed to be done and my grandson absolutely freaked out. Bugs were so thick you couldn’t walk across the floor without stepping on one and they were even falling out of the vents that were high up on the walls and falling off the curtain rods.
    I don’t think I have ever seen an adult male as jittery as my grandson was. Even I was calmer than he was.

    Reply

  46. Well, a couple stories came to mind –

    My husband is terrified of spiders and centipedes. When our son was about 18 months old we were playing in our living room and daddy was going to take a shower. All of a sudden daddy is yelling comes running out of our bathroom stark naked into the living room (mind you the window in there was a large picture window with NO curtains). He was yelling and brushing off his body frantically! My son just stood there staring at him very confused. He was yelling something about a bug in the tub.He had taken out his contacts and was getting into the shower (had not turned on the water yet). He noticed something in the tub and thought it was just a part of a toy from our sons bath. He leaned down and grabbed it and it squirmed in his hand freaking him out! It was a centipede! I then went into the bathroom and killed it. He decided not to take a shower and went and got dressed. We still laugh when we tell this story – he was really freaked out over the incident.

    Reply

  49. When I was a kid, I didn’t really understand how those sprays worked. So one day there was a wasp in the house and I used the ENTIRE can of wasp spray on that one poor bug. Our house STUNK for weeks!

    Reply

  50. When I was five years old, I had a terrible run in with a bug. We had a lovely screened in porch at our house that housed all of mine and my brothers outdoor toys. One day we decided to play with the bubbles we had. I chose to use the bubble saxophone, a toy in which you blex into and the bubbles came out of the bottom of the saxophone. As I started to blow I felt something pinch me, immediately I threw down the toy, knocked whatever bit me off my lip and began to cry. My mom came in to see an earwig crawling away. It was the last time I ever used that toy. Just last year my dog came in from outside and it was clear something was wrong with her mouth. Upon further investigation me and my mom realized that an earwig had bitten her tongue and its pinchers and half of its body was still stuck in there. It took forever to get every piece of it out. Needless to say, earwigs and mouths don’t get along very well in our family. Thanks for the giveaway, reading these stories give me the chills!
    [email protected]

    Reply

  51. We were moving out of military housing and I was at the house by myself cleaning. I was almost done when someone knocked at the front door. As I opened the door I looked down and there was tarantula trying to come into the house. I started screaming and slammed the door in some ladies face. I guess that was when she saw it as she started screaming and said she would come back later. I was so scared to open the front door up that when it was time to leave I went out the back door.

    Reply

  52. We bought a townhouse a year ago only to discover that it and the whole complex are infested with farrow ants. They seem to love our bathroom and kitchen (anywhere with water) and you can’t even blow your nose and throw the tissue in the trash cause they’ll make a trail right to it. Ugh!!

    Reply

  53. Accckk!! Just hearing that story freaks me out & is making me squirmy! I have an equally disgusting bug story! When I first moved in with my husband about 12 years ago lets just say he and his roommate at the time definitly had a bachelor pad! I was cuddling one night with my then boyfriend, now hubby and as we were blissfully drifting asleep in each others arms I felt something lightly brush across my cheek and across my forehead. I was just about asleep and I thought it was my hubby gently touching my cheek as I slept, so I put my hand up to grab his and there it was…a GIANT, FAT COCKROACH!!!! I have NEVER jumped up so fast in my life, all the while screaming like someone was about to murder me!!! Needless to say, the next day and weeks to come that place was cleaned and bug bombed!! Just thinking about it make me want to run screaming again!!

    Reply

  54. I was sleeping and felt something crawling on my back and it was a stink bug and it was horrible,could not sleep after that
    ardelong2(at)gmail(dot)com

    Reply

  56. I hate bugs and won’t touch them if I find them, even with a tissue but my 10 year daughter doesn’t mind touching them so one day I found a roach running on the floor and I called her her to pick it up and she brought in a tissue and picked it up but it started to crawl up her own so she flung her arm and the bug flew in the air landing on my hair. I freaked out trying to get it out of my hair and she just stood there laughing.

    Reply

  57. We had moved to the desert when my son was 10 years old He made friends quickly with a boy in the neighborhood who had similar interests as my son They both enjoyed nature
    and use to walk their dogs together searching for creatures. One day they came home with
    a tarantula in a plastic tub. Being new to this type of spider I was freaked out. I told my son he could not keep it. The other boy said they are harmless and his Mom would let him have it. So, I told him that was great and he could have it and my son could visit it at his house.
    The next morning I went out to water and there on my front porch was the tarantula in
    the plastic tub. I guess his Mom wasn’t so excited about it either!

    Reply

  59. Me and my husband were sitting in the living room and we noticed something crawling up the wall… As i start to go near it to see what it was the darn rach flew towards me and I panicked! Both me and my husband ran out..lol. I came to the resuce with a broom, sure wish i had Raid!

    Reply

  60. When I was a child, a hornet landed on my back. My mother told me to be still, and that it would fly away. You guessed it. It stung me anyway! I still don’t like bees, but, especially now, because after stepping on one as an adult, I found out I’m allergic to them. Now, I have to carry a bee sting kit with me wherever I go!!

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  61. One night my husband and I were watching a movie. I was laying on the couch and he was in the recliner. All of a sudden I said to him, “oh, wow do you see that big spider on the screen?” He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “there isn’t any spider on the screen, you’re seeing things.” I said, “no, I’m not seeing things. It’s right there.” As I pointed to where I saw it, my finger hit the silk the spider was hanging onto…right in front of my face! You never saw anyone jump up off the couch so fast. We did have a good laugh about it later.

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  65. About a year ago I saw a cockroach crawling around on the floor and thought I killed it with bugspray. When it stopped moving, I put it in the toilet and flushed it down. About 30 minutes later, I went to use my bathroom facilities and as I approached the toilet, there was the roach I flushed earlier slowly crawling up the side! I couldn’t believe it! I flushed several times and poured numerous liquid chemicals into the toilet. After that, I left in disgust. It took a while for me to get up enough courage to go to the bathroom but eventually I had no choice.

    To this day, the first thing I do when I approach a toilet is to check for roaches.

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  66. First off let me say I’ve ALWAYS been afraid of bugs, any size or shape = total fear! I was 19 years old. It was June bug season. Somehow one got into the house. It landed on a lampshade that I was seated next to. I shot up like a fighter pilot using the eject button of his diver plane. LOL My friend bravely decided to get the bug & throw it outside. She crept up on it covered it with one hand & slid it down into her other hand. YESSSS problem solved. I go open the front door for her when she begins to laugh a little, then shout “It tickles!” & she straight throws the bug at me holding the door open for her!! I felt it hit down on my right ankle. I run out the door & begin doing some sort of tribal mating dance as all of a sudden a tribe of aboriginees walked up. j/k I was jumping around & using my left foot to repeatedly kick my right ankle so as to knock off the June bug. All while facing much uproarious laughter from my family & friend present. Once I sufficiently believed that bug had to be gone I stopped & had my friend & my dad look. They both said there was no bug on my ankles so I walked back into the house. Once inside my friend nonchalantly pointed out “the June bug’s still on your ankle.” At which point I ran outside again & repeated my tribal dance. After another minute of the dance my friend made me stop jumping & picked the bug off & threw it into the air where it flew off into the night. I’m so grateful that in the past few years June bug season hasn’t yielded as many of those darn bugs!! 🙂

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  69. When I was about 17, I would use half a package of hot chocolate and some coffee to make a nice mocha treat. Since it was in one-day intervals, I would just roll up the bag. One time, I make my little drink concoction and, as I was drinking it, I noticed something chewy in my mouth. I immediately spit out what was in my mouth and guess what I found – a HALF of a worm! That’s right – half! So where was the other half? I’m sure you can guess . . . To this day I am very sensitive to anything unusual in my drink, including the film created from heated milk. Ever since I have been very careful of how I store food, including powdered items!

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  70. My creepy “bug” story is from about 10 years ago. My husband and I lived in a small apartment in Tennessee. We came home for a friend’s home late one evening and groggily climbed into bed. As I stuck my foot under the covers something stung me on my foot. It hurt so bad that I started hollering to my husband that something bit me under the covers. He jumped into action and threw back the bed sheets and started looking around for whatever this was. Next thing I knew he was beating something to death with his shoe at the foot of the bed. I kept yelling, “What is it? What is it?” He says, “Babe, it’s a scorpion!” What? I was from the North and I didn’t know that there was a such thing as wood scorpions that didn’t kill you when they stung you. I immediately clutched my throat. “Do I feel something?” “Am I poisoned?” My husband decided to call poison control just to check and then we learned about those crazy wood scorpions and how they are not the poisonous kind. It was a crazy event indeed!

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  71. About seventeen years ago or so, my nephew who is now in college was about two years old. We were outside and playing with a ball on the driveway. At that age, he wasn’t the most coordinated and balanced walker in the world. He would waddle back and forth in the way that a youngster his age usually walks. Anyway, he looked down and there was a spider crawling around near his feet. He started screaming and tried to stomp on the spider. Now picture this: Here’s my little nephew swaying back and forth looking like he could lose his balance at any second tying to squash a spider with his foot while he’s screaming. Every time he’d bring one foot down, he’d miss the spider by a mile and immediately he’d counter-balance himself by lifting the other foot and then bringing it down to try and hit the spider–all the while screaming in staccato-like shrieks. Try as he might, he couldn’t get either foot to make contact with the spider. While watching this, it occurred to me that it looked like he was dancing a jig…or the Mexican Hat Dance or something like it. All I know is that this entire situation struck me so funny that I started laughing. Then it became so humorous that I actually had tears running down from my eyes. My little nephew never did come close to smashing that spider. When I finally regained my composure, I just took his little hand and led him away from the “scary creature.” It was one of the best laughs of my life. [Now that this topic refreshed my memory of that hysterical situation, I think I’ll ask my nephew the next time I seem him if he remembers it at all. Probably not.]

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  74. My creepiest bug story, is not about an actual bug, but what I THOUGHT was a bug! LOL

    I was traveling in Arizona in 2000. I was deathly afraid of the Tarantulas, scorpions, and rattle snakes there. We were traveling at night, so I was scared to stop at rest areas. It was all quiet when we were going down the road, and all of a sudden something falls and hits my arm. I scream BLOODY MURDER. I screamed like you hear the people in horror movies! lol. If you know me, you know I never ever scream like that.

    I thought it was a tarantula. I get the flashlight and look… It was the casing that came off the dome light on the side of the door! I felt like a fool! lol. I think the funniest part was my boyfriend at the time, was just looking at me when I screamed. He was looking at me like I was insane. He didnt even ask what was wrong! I think he was baffled.

    11 years later, he still teases me about watching out for those venomous dome lights!

    itsjustme62613 at gmail.com

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  75. I remember the first time I had moved from Pa. to Louisiana and since living in Pa. never had any bug problem. Well I remember putting my kids to bed, my husband just left for work, ( he was on graveyard shift), and finally sitting down , feeling a little scared being in a new place and all and out of the corner of my eye thought I saw something….did I ? Nah, I am just getting paranoid… WAIT>>> there it is again…OMG!!!! A bug the size of a mouse was crawling up the wall!!!! I have never seen it or a bug sooooooooooooooo big in my life!!!!!!!!!!! I flung off the chair and grabbed the broom to try to kill it and it fell onto the floor and starting running toward me… OMG!! I grabbed my husband shoe and started pounding on it and lifted the shoe up and it was still alive!!! I had to grab a hammer to kill it. I found out the next day it was a tree roach from out side and it has a hard shell and very hard to kill but they do die in the house for some odd reason they can not survive indoors. I will never forget that day for the rest of my life.

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  78. I moved to Costa Rica in the late 1990s. I didnt speak much Spanish at first. We moved int a little bamboo hut with a thatch roof on the Pacific Coast. Perhaps the 3rd day we were there a Tci gentleman walked up to our door dressed in a suit and tie with a backpack on. I had enough Spanish to know that 5 people within a 3km radius of my home had recently contracted malaria. Through a lot of hand gestures etc we found he wanted to take our blood to test us for malaria and give us some quinine. We did these things but I lived in great fear of the copious amounts of mosquitos for the rest of my time there…this is not to mention alll of the other indigenous creepy crawlies. I slept under a mosquito net for the year I was there….

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  79. OMG! I hate centipede’s – UGH just typing that words gives me the creeps. Anyway one morning I went downstairs to iron my clothes for work and a centipede crawled across the floor. I went screaming like crazy upstairs woke up my son and husband and made them come downstairs at 5:30am to find this centipede and kill it. I made them move furniture and everything until they found it and killed it. They just creep me out. My family now says they know my exact scream when I see a centipede. LOL!

    msjem2001 at yahoo dot com

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  81. I have a dozy of a bug story! It’s actually the reason why I have arachnophobia to this day.

    When I was four, I was the worst sleeper. I wouldn’t go to bed on time, needed my light to stay on until I fell asleep and I also needed the TV blasting. One night, when I was supposed to be in bed, I decided to quietly play with my toys in my room. Somehow, one of my toys fell under my bed and I reached under it to get it. When I looked under the bed, there were eyes staring back at me. More than 2…more than 4! I screamed and ran into my parents’ room, but I wasn’t alone. The black TARANTULA that I found under the bed ran after me into the next room! My dad caught it and tried to make me look at it to instantly get over my fear but it was too late. I was petrified and couldn’t sleep for a week. Now, whenever I see any kind of spider I turn right back into that little girl. Ugh! Bugs!

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  83. When I was 1st married, almost 40 yrs ago…I heard a noise in the night and woke my hubby up to check it out…it was a huge cockroach carrying a cheeto across the linoluem floor…we were renting then and I went to the store the next day and bought a cart full of Raid! And started looking for a new place to live…bugs…yuk!!!

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  87. My Story is short, but kind of funny/creepy. I was going to get my son a sippy cup of milk and I opened the fridge door to grab the carton. I stood up, looked towards the window across the room and hanging from the light above my head was this ugly spider hanging on his ‘string’ inches from my face. Not something I like to be experiencing in any situation, let alone as a surprise.

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  88. When I was in the navy i was stationed in japan. I got a house out in town and on my first sleeping there geji geji bug walked across my face. scared the hell out of me because a lot of japanese bugs are poisonious and im didn’t know which ones.

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  89. when my husband and i were first married we stayed with relatives. at one of our relatives house there were a lot of bugs. we tried to kill them and used spray but nothing worked. we would leave cups of koolaid out and the next morning there were a lot of dead bugs in the cups. that’s how we knew there were a lot of bugs. it was gross and i was terrified that they would get on me. i am sure that they did but i never woke up to one in my mouth or on my body.

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  91. I grew up in Ohio; it’s too cold for bugs there. When I was old enough to move, I decided sunny Florida was for me (and I lived there and loved it for the next 18 years). What I didn’t realize upon initial entry, however, was that in addition to the beautiful sand and sea, there was also an abundance of new creatures to be found at every turn. My first month living there, alone in my tiny, new apartment, something moving on my wall caught my attention through my peripheral vision. I instantly turned my head and froze. There was a dark brown Palmetto Bug (a bug I’d never even heard of at that point in my life) at least four inches long on my white wall. I was scared to death to kill it (remember, I’m an 18-year old kid who never saw a -bug so big in my life), but I knew I had to try. I walked towards it and it moved. I froze, and it did too. I went back to my couch and looked at it through the corner of my eye. What to do, what to do?? I had a book on my coffee table; a rather large book, and though I loved my book and didn’t want to harm it, I more did not want that bug in my house. But instead of a firm whack up close to ensure death, I threw the book from afar in the general direction of the beast that was making me a nervous wreck. Much to my chagrin and utter surprise the bug began to fly. A six inch cockroach-looking bug was flying right at me. I screamed and jumped up on my couch batting towards it with my hands to keep it away. It was the most terrifying, and later hysterical, event of my life up to that point. I can still, many, many years later, feel the trepidation I had towards that big, nasty bug. The bug disappeared and I went out and bought bug spray and (later) white tablets designed to kill them. Coming home I must have sprayed half of the can around the house trying to reassure myself that I’d keep it from coming back into sight. And then I left the house until it was dark, returning home only because I felt I had to. And I slept with the lights on, probably for weeks, but def. for that night. I still hate bugs to this day, and though we recently moved back up north due to my father-in-law’s health issues, I did live down there for 18 years, and I never could bring myself to find enough courage to kill one of those things when I happened across one (and I did happen across them, many times over the years). They are so big you can hear them walk, you know, if everything is very quiet in the place they’re walking. Nasty, nasty, nasty. I hate bugs.

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  94. My funny bug story happened when I was in 4th grade. We were learning about bugs and supposed to collect them at home and bring them to school. I saw a huge bug on our porch and yelled to my mom to bring a container so I could catch it. She hurries outside with the container and as she steps out onto put porch she steps on the bug and kills it. There goes my science project she killed it.

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  95. Growing up we were pretty poor,there wasn’t many snacks to be had,so when we got something all 5 of us kids were thrilled.
    We would s it in the living room floor ,huddled together with only the flickering of the old,black and white TV for light.Our dad had brought us a big box of raisins,we were happy…
    We rolled and savored every raisin there in the dark,that was until my brother took his handful into the kitchen and turned on the light…that’s when it turned into a nightmare! He started screaming”DOOKIE WORMS”,we all knew what that meant,MAGGOTS!
    We all looked secretly wishing he was the only one who ate them,he wasn’t.Needless to say we all got sick and I will never eat another raisin in the dark (or light) again!

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  96. my creepy bug story just happened a few weeks ago when i was in the woods behind our home. I was gathering leaves in the woods to mulch one of my gardens raking them into piles and putting them in a 30 gallon garbage can..well 3 nights ago i went to itch the top part of my back right in the center and i felt a big bubble..Im like what the hell is that???? so I hollered to my daughter and her boyfriend and they came into the room..she looks at my back and startS saying OH MY GOD,OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!!!! and im like what what what..it was a tick embedded in my back so my daughters boyfriend took some tweezers and pulled it out..that thing didnt want to budge..it took quite a few minutes to get it out.yesterday my hubby was looking at it and said that it looked like the head was still in there so he spent a half hour digging it out with a needle and tweezers..i did not care about any pain i just wanted that creeper out of there..YUCK. I will buy my mulch from now on..lol

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  97. I had a huge black spider crawling on my sandaled foot while driving.I almost crashed when I saw it and pulled over and tried wiping it off without it biting me

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  98. My 2nd year of college my roommate and I were having a movie marathon with the Saw movies. We had the lights off and I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. There was a huge palmetto bug (larger than a cockroach and can fly) on the wall! I, of course, immediately screamed and turned on the lights. Neither of us were very good with handling bugs. I tried spraying it with hairspray since we didn’t have any Raid and it darted straight at us. After running out of the room, we came back and tried again. It continued to fly straight at us, with us running away screaming, every time we tried to sprayed it. About an hour into this it finally crawled into a bookshelf. Both of us refused to go to sleep after so I turned on the tv and we were up to nearly 5:30am. Eventually we both fell asleep and woke up a few hours later. Since we had drenched it in hairspray we expected it to be dead. I pulled things off the bookshelf and found it in a pack of paper in a bin. I pulled out the bin and it started crawling again! My roommate and I ran out of the dorm and I dumped all of the content in the bin on the lawn. It quickly ran away, we collected our things, and it was finally over!

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  101. I had just moved to San Antonio, TX from Colorado. I got an apartment with a patio. It was a nice summer evening and I had the patio door open. I was in the bathroom when I was dive-bombed by a REALLY BIG flying roach. I’d never seen anything like it and ran screaming outside. It was really scary. I moved back to Colorado where we don’t have those things.
    Thanks for the contest.

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  102. My creepiest bug story starts out like any normal Sunday with my family. Were sitting around having coffee and chatting. As I start to tell everyone how my week at work went I spot a huge cockroach climbing up my moms back…..I very calmly asked her not to panick because I know my mom is terrified of bugs. “Mom, please stay calm, there is a cockroach climbing up your back.” Well instead of staying calm, she freaked out and screamed so loud and hard that she farted!! Everyone was laughing so hard they forgot to help her get the bug off of her back so she was running around trying to get it off, beet red mind you. I finally smacked it off and saved her from the bug. Needless to say, it was an interesting Sunday morning that we still talk about to this day.

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  103. I didn’t think I had a story, but I had been thinking along the lines of creepy rather than funny. Then I remembered the time that I had purchased a whole container full of crickets to feed to our bearded dragon (a frequent occurrance–she eats several dozen a week.) But this particular time I left the container on the floor within reach of my 2 year old! Big OOOOOPPS! You guessed it, the crickets were set free to live a happy and noisy life in every corner of my house. Think summertime camping noises in the middle of winter– “chirp chirp chirp” CONSTANTLY! It was several weeks of catching crickets in random places throughout the house and throwing them in to the lizard’s cage. Needless to say, I never left the crickets in reach of the toddler again!

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  104. I tend to block out things like creepy bug encounters, but there is one that was too memorable to ever forget. Keep in mind I’ve spent most of my life on the west coast. Apparently most of the big nasty bugs never made it across the Rockies to our side.

    We were visiting friends in Dallas while Hubs looked at grad schools. We told our hosts to go out for the evening while we stayed in with their sleeping child. I was at the mirror in the bathroom when this cigar-sized thing came flying at me from the ceiling. Trying to muffle my terror so I didn’t wake the baby, I did some kind of jumping/dancing/swatting/completely-grossing-out routine while I ran to get Hubs to deal with it for me. My first encounter with a cockroach!

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  105. I have a creepy wasp story. It was soon after my second daughter was born and we were living in Navy housing. It was a 4-unit building with a carport on each end and 2 carports in the middle, but all buildings were essentially linked. My mom was out visiting and was sleeping downstairs in our living room while we were all upstairs. She woke up in the middle of the night with wasps all over in the living room. She found a fly swatter and started killing them. She kept this up all night – and didn’t come up and wake us! We couldn’t believe the amount of dead wasps when we came downstairs the next day. We immediately called the housing office who sent someone out. Turns out they had been out the day before because one of the neighbors had complained about wasps outside. They had sprayed and forced the little buggers inside! They took care of the problem the second time – but imagine if one of those would have gotten to my newborn! Grandma to the rescue!

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  106. My parents had two large maple trees in their backyard. The trees always had the big black ants crawling all over them. I would ask my parents if they couldn’t spray the trees or something. We were having a cookout on their deck which was under the trees. As I was drinking my iced tea I crunched on what I thought was a piece of ice – no it was an ant!

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  107. We recently moved to florida. I work up at 5am to get my baby a bottle. I noticed my husband dropped his wallet on the middle of the tile floor in the living room!!! I went to go pick it up (he had left for work). As I got closer I saw a HUGE, BROWN, HAIRY!!!!!!!!! Spider. I went to get some spray cleaner and started spraying it. This made it RUN at ME!!! I ran backwards. I found a box and threw it on it. I stepped on it and heard it crunch/pop. It was HORRID!!!! I am scarred for life truly!!!

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  108. I am a really old fart, so this occurred many moons ago. I loved to swing as a child, and could spend endless hours swinging and daydreaming. I was just about to slow down and get off when there was, what seemed, a swarm of flies about my head. As I jumped off, one got in my ear. I recall grabbing at my ear, and am told I went into something like those mad cows that twirl round and round. My older brother had to grab me and drag me into the house. Since I could not run in circles, I shook my head fiercely accompanied by much screaming. Again I had to be picked up and carried to the bathroom sink where several people tried to hold my head still, to pour hydrogen peroxide in my ear. The horrific buzzing in my ear finally quieted to the bubbling sounds of the peroxide doing its job. They had me lay my head on a pillow with a towel to collect the few remaining pieces of the dastardly fly. I have never enjoyed swinging since.

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  110. I used to live in Florida, where some of the cockroaches are big enough to saddle up and ride down Main Street! Well, not literally, but those horrid things are around three inches in length and THEY FLY!!!! (And they smell, too. Yick).

    In the last house I lived in before I moved from Florida, there were a lot of these cockroaches. I’d have to regularly set off bug bombs, which helped for a week or so. The clean up was gross because there were dozens of these three inch bugs on their backs with their legs still twitching. I was so glad to leave the state and move way up north, thinking that I’d never see another one of those horrid creatures again.

    Well, I was wrong….

    You see, my mother sent up several boxes of my items that I wasn’t able to pack and take with me during the move. You wouldn’t believe it, but those horrible cockroaches were trying to come out of the big boxes. They had hidden in some of my things I guess. Anyway, they got stuck in the packing tape, with their legs twitching, still very much alive, when they arrived at my destination in Minnesota.

    I’m shuddering at the memory of it. I HATED those things!

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  112. We have really big Wolf Spiders where I live. One night when my son was 6 he was taking a shower and he started hollering for me. I walked in and a huge Wolf Spider was crawling up his leg. He was frozen still and I got the spider off and killed it. He is 11 now and still looks to make sure there are no spiders in the shower every night before he gets in.

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  113. I don’t like ants. At all. A couple years ago, they attacked our house…or that’s what it felt like to me. Suddenly, ants were everywhere! I started wearing sandals/shoes to go into the kitchen so I didn’t have to step on them. I would NOT do the dishes because there were ants crawling around inside the sink. During a brief break in the ants’ rampage, I thoroughly cleaned the kitchen. But they came back! This lasted for quite awhile. One day, in desperation, my youngest brother and I smashed as many ants as we could with our shoes and tried to sweep every last one (alive or dead) out the door with a broom. As we were doing this, my brother said, “There are ants from all over the world!”

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  114. I’m the youngest, and when I was little my older siblings always beat me to the prize in the cereal box. One morning I got up early to be the one to open the new box of cereal so that I could get the prize. My Mom came in the kitchen as I sat on the floor with my entire arm deep in my box of cocoa krispies–just as I heard my Mom telling me to get my arm out of the cereal I found my prize. I pulled it out and held it in my hand –as I stared at it trying to figure out what it was my Mother began to scream–my prize was a huge potato bug!
    [email protected]

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  115. Last summer my husband and I were cleaning the garage. He found a plastic spider that belonged to our son, and showed it to me. A minute later, he threw it at my and I screamed and just about cried too, I was so scared! Pretty dumb considering he’d just shown me it was fake right before, lol. I’m not a bug fan!

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  116. This past winter, we went on vacation with our best friends to Cuba. What a lovely time. Well, the first night as we were settling into bed, I heard a scream from across the hallway. Little did I know that my friend had turned down the covers of her bed only to discover a HUGE bug (she was too mortified to take a picture) on her pillow. The story she tells is great too – as each time she tells it, the bug gets bigger!

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  117. I hate roaches, and living in Florida, I am surrounded by them. I remember waking up once and opening my eyes to find myself face-to-face with a gigantic roach. Another time one came running at me in the bathroom and I leaped on the toilet, and the seat shifted and I very nearly broke the toilet and my neck. Afterwards, I kind of laughed at myself, because I always made fun of people in movies who would jump on chairs because they saw a mouse. Well, heck, mice are cute and furry, not like nasty roaches. The creepiest thing though, and I don’t know why I watched a movie about fire-starting roaches, but I did, it was called BUG, and as I was watching this movie on TV, giant roaches kept coming out and staring at the TV screen. It was horrifying.

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  118. My creepiest bug story is from just a few years ago. I had two small children at the time. It was a hot day in Arizona and I was going out to run a few errands. I did the usual – opened the garage door and helped my kids into the van making sure they were buckled and ready to go. I walked around the front of the van to get to my seat when I caught a glimpse of something standing in the garage doorway. A tarantula!!! I think I let out a small scream. “Please please please don’t crawl in my garage,” I pleaded. It ignored me heading straight for the mess of lawn chairs, bikes, and baby equipment strewn on the garage floor. Ack!! If it got in there I would never get it out and then I would always know there was a killer tarantula hiding in the garage and, well, that’s it….I would have to move. At that moment, a stranger happened to walk by my house. I flagged him down and pleaded for him to be my hero for the day. It took a short while but he managed to trap the hideous thing under a flower pot and toted the thing outside. “What are you going to do with it?” I asked, suddenly feeling more humane regarding the creature now that it was out of my abode. “My daughter loves these. I’ll save it till she gets home.”

    Ugh! Not a spider person. That’s my story 🙂

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  120. Have you ever seen a grass spider? The really big, hairy kind…that run super fast? Well…back when I used to be a smoker (yep, I’ve been off the cigs for going on 3 years now), I went outside one Summer night to have a smoke on our back porch. I had on a pair of thin sleep pants, the long kind. I hated going out there at night. Not because I was afraid of the dark, but because these big grass spiders would come sit at our back door near the light; catching bugs I suspect. I was always afraid of stepping on one or having one run across my foot…crazy what a nicotine addiction can make you do. I finished my smoke and turned to go back in the house…and…what the…I felt it. Yep, I felt a grass spider went right up thigh. I imagine there’s no telling how long it had been sitting on the inside of my sleep pants around my calf, just sitting there, waiting to make its move. I never felt it until it was up the front of my thigh where the material was closer to my skin. I jumped in the house, started screaming “There’s a spider in my pants, there’s a spider in my pants.” I grabbed what I hoped was the spider with my fingers in a big bunch of pant material. Then I stood there frozen. What did I do next? How did I get my pants off and not let go of this spider at the same time? I didn’t want to squeeze too hard or spider guts were going to ooze everywhere. Somehow hubby helped me manage out of my pants, while I calmed freaked, and we killed it. I get the heeby-geeby-willies every time I think about it.

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  123. I remember getting stung by a bee in gradeschool and a few weeks later I started having some really weird dreams. One night, I woke up screaming at the top of my lungs thinking that I was being attacked by a swarm. My mother ran into my room and turned on the light and they all went away (thank goodness).

    About a week later, I felt a little tickle on my forehead, thinking it was a swarm of bee’s again, I starting screaming at the top of my lungs again (mind you, with four of us in a small home, I woke up EVERYBODY!) to get rid of the bee’s, but this time, it was actually a black widow on my forehead. My mother starting screaming and managed to kill the spider without giving me a black eye (but just barely!).

    Though it totally freaked me out, I think it scared my mother alot more. Our house was sprayed for weeks after this and to this day, I remember those dreams very vividly!

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  126. Oh no, a bug story!!! Creeps me out just writing about them. Ok Hmm which one should I choose. Well when I was growing up we had a big…BIG problem with waterbugs. I am scared to death of most bugs,spiders,wasps. You name it. Well I remember going to the bathroom one night, after waking up. And sitting on the toilet. Mind you I was always on the look-out for the big scary nasty looking waterbugs. I finally relax thinking that Ok.. I think I’m safe now, as I sit on the toilet I feel a big thump on my head. OH MY!!! I started freaking. You know the kind where your whole body starts to twitch cause you don’t know where it is or if It is still on you. I literally ran out of the bathroom pants down and all. I think I felt something crawling on me for 2 days afterwards. I still get shivers just talking about it now. They were so bad that when my sister moved back home with the kids, one of her daughters cried all the time and was too scared to go to the bathroom alone. Thank Goodness that they managed to get rid of them now.

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  129. My daughter was trying some old rubber boots on at my dad’s house to go out to see the horses. They dumped the boots out to make sure there were no bugs – nope! She put the boot on and it felt wierd. She took it off and my dad stuck his hand in to see if the liner was bunched up. YIKES! A giant cockroach looking bug came out! I have never seen a bug at their house but this bug was enormous! So gross! AND, that really leads to paranoia (sp?) when putting ANY shoes on! Thanks so much for the drawing!

    Reply

  131. My youngest son was about 4 when he brought the biggest Katydid in the house. It was a big as his little hand. He brought it right up to me and stuck it in my face and said see mama bug. I told him to get that out of the house before it bit him and he let it go. No sooner than I’d gotten the words out of my mouth he yelled and through the bug across the room. I yelled for my oldest son to come get it. Him and their daddy finally found it but not before it bit my husband. He said no wonder that Jacob hollered that that darn bug bit him hard and it hurt like the dickens. We found a plastic cup in the house. That was the only Jacob would go near it after that.

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  133. Lately, ladybugs have been invading our home, especially our boys’ bedroom. My youngest son counted up to 103 ladybugs in their room at one time. Most of them were dead. One night, he was staring at one ladybug in particular. I asked him what he was doing. He said, “I’m watching a ladybug race.” I went to take a closer look and saw one ladybug taking a stroll on a lamp’s cord. I puzzled, “How is one ladybug having a race?” He replied, “I want to see how fast it takes for it to go around the cord.” I smiled, “Oh I see!”

    Reply

  134. Where do I begin? Which bug to tell about? I lived in Australia for 4 years where the bugs are bigger, hairier, scarier, creepier and crawlier. Termites rattled our door frames snacking on our town house. Cockroaches rivaling any I’ve ever seen my years living in Central Florida, would creep out from under my oven and loiter, staring me down, until I threatened them with a huge phone book. Spiders the size of my husband’s hand scurried up the wall and jumped down the hall, all the while my heroic husband chasing them and coating them with fly spray. Ants and other bugs I’ve never seen in the Northern Hemisphere marched through daily on parade. Each night I prayed that I wouldn’t wake up with any in my bed. I never did. I’m so thankful.

    Reply

  135. I watched in excitement my sweet beautiful dog tossing a cricket up and down to “play” with it. She would gently toss it up with her mouth, catch it as it came back down and maybe even paw at it I guess to see if it would play back?? All the while I’m just imagining: what is the cricket thinking? He has to be having an out of body experience and wondering am I going to die or is this beast ever going to stop? I just couldn’t stop wondering what that poor cricket was thinking so I had to eventually save him and put him outside to hop off. Just wondered if he was ever the same after that. 🙂

    Reply

  137. At my old house to walk into our house you had to walk under a grapevine, so you can imagine all the fallen grapes on the ground below. When the grapes began to fall we alternated daily on who was to remove all the ripe grapes so that the squished ones wouldn’t attract bees or be tracked into the house. On the day it was my turn I came out with a bowl to remove the grapes and when I was done placed the bowl into the sink and began running water over them to wash them. Within seconds of the water hitting them I noticed spiders running out of the bowl away from the water and I freaked out. I then realized I was covered in spiders, my hair, my clothes, crawling all over me. I began to rip off my clothes and ran upstairs to the shower to wash them all off of me. After getting out of the shower I headed to my sisters room to grab a shirt of mine she borrowed and as I was walking into her room a spider jumped off the door at me, it was like he knew I had just washed and killed all of his relatives in the shower. To this day I freak out whenever I see a spider and it is like I have been branded because it seems like rather than run away they always come after me.

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  139. I was living in a garden level apartment during my senior year in college, sleeping on a mattress on the floor because I was broke. I woke up one Saturday to feel something on my arm. I flicked it away, because I’m not easily freaked out, and went back to sleep. This happened two more times before I awoke fully and realized that I was covered, simply covered, in black ants. They were migrating across the floor, and they were everywhere. I had them in my hair, up and down my legs, and all over my bed.

    To this day, I cannot stand ants. I’m sure you can understand why.

    Reply

  140. So last summer was my first summer in my current house, and it was a bad year for yellowjackets. One evening I saw a bee flying around the lights on my ceiling. No huge deal, but not happy about it. Then I look up again and there is a second bee next to another light. Then a third and then a fourth. Now I was not a happy camper at all. It seems that since the house is a little old, somewhere in the walls is a nest. So we kill all the bees we can see and set off a bug bomb the next morning. I plug up all the holes where I think they are coming into the house. After the bomb…I vacuum up all the dead bees that I can find…but they are resiliant little suckers. I was finding them…some of them still alive but growing weaker for weeks. And the icing on the cake…one of them fell down into my hair and I could hear it buzzing. NOT FUN at all. So thats my bug story…

    Reply

  141. My bug story (shudder!):

    A few years ago, during the summer, cicadas came out. They are these extremely creepy bugs that come out only once ever 17(?) years, and that was the first time I had ever encountered them. They were EVERYWHERE, so much so that i stopped going outside as much as possible because they freaked me out!

    One day I was at Wal-mart with my mom and my sister. We were walking to the car, and I discovered there was a CICADA ON MY SHIRT! I screamed as loud as I could and ran around making a total fool of myself screaming, “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!!” Somehow, we got it off of my shirt and we were going to get back into the car. There was this lady at the car next to us with a questioning look on her face. My mom explained that there has been a cicada on my shirt. The lady proceeded to tell us that, “Oh, I had a cicada on me the other day, and I just picked it up and threw it off.” And this is after I made a gigantic scene in the middle of a Wal-mart parking lot. Yeah!:)

    Reply

  143. Im not particulary freaked out by bugs…but my husband on the other hand is worse than 10 year old girl when it comes to spiders!! He is a true manly man…atleast I thought! We live in the country and apparently around these parts as soon as the weather starts getting cold the house spiders start pouring in everywhere! It does make me a little squemish but I have never seen a grown man jump so high. One night when getting ready for bed my husband lifted up the blanket to crawl in and there was a spider in his spot. He jumped and ran! Now every night I have to check the blankets and everything before he will even get near the bed! Its great……oh the teasing he gets for this!

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  145. When you travel overseas you begin to realize the value of showers. While traveling in Central America one summer, I finally got to take a shower. I was excited! It was hot, humid, and sticky. I happily adjusted the water temp and jumped in. Only to realize that a huge taranchula was ALSO taking a shower at that moment. I hopped right out, screaming all the way. Keep your towels close, girls.

    Reply

  146. My Raid Story. It is true and very disturbing to those of us that it happened to.

    My sis in law (then only my best friend) and I lived in an apartment together when we were 19. This was in 1986. It was a nice apartment in a very nice neighborhood so we never expected this to happen.
    One day we saw a roach in the kitchen. We weren’t used to that and so we decided to fight back. We went to the store and bought 2 cans of Raid roach spray. I forget the exact title, but it was supposed to also sterilize the roaches. Cool! We’ll get rid of that bug!
    We went back to the apartment and I took one end of the long (not wide) apartment and sis took the other.
    Once sis got to the kitchen they came out all over! I guess we were effective! She was standing on a chair with a half can of raid screaming as a roach ran up her leg. I gave her my half can and I was sent to run off for “reinforcements”!
    The nearest store was 10 blocks away, but I couldn’t wait! My sis was under attack! I ran the whole way stopping at every bus stop to see if there was a bus to hurry me along. I got to the store and bought as many raid cans as I had money for and then had to run the entire way back!
    We then did a very good spray with the Raid.
    We knew that the apartment complex sprayed every month with a professional company, but after we used Raid we never saw another bug. I like to think we have a reputation around those bugs. They stayed away!
    This is a story we recall and really do fondly think of Raid. It works!

    Reply

  147. Okay, I am going to be no name on this post, because yea this is not only creepy but gross… I live in the South, and we get these big wood roaches. Well, I was taking a shower got out to dry off and felt a burn in my ear, I thought I got water in it, so I put a little peroxide in my ear to bubble out the water, that did not fix my problem. I still felt for months that I had water in my ear I would clean my ear with a qtip and I always had this funny smell coming from my ear. After about 3 months I got one of those baby syringes, and started pumping water into my ear. I was so sickened what was coming out, bits and piece of dead roach. I googled to see about this issue and sure enough it is a common problem. The roach tries to get to the heat do not ask me why my ear it was burning up in here as it was!

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  149. My story happened about 10 years ago. My mom lived by herself, and she called me to tell me she found this huge black bug in her house. I said, “what is it?”, and she said, she didn’t know and she put it in a jar to show me the next time I visited. I lived about 2 hours away. So the next time I came down for a visit, we were eating dinner when I said, “hey mom where is that bug you caught?” She said, right there on the counter. So I got up and I looked in the jar, and I started to laugh so hard I cried and wet my pants from laughing. You see my mom’s eye sight was not so great, and it was after the grandchildren had gone to a carnival.. In the jar was a very huge and very black plastic bug. Everyone at the table started laughing and some couldn’t even swallow their meal as they were laughing, well almost everyone, my mom didn’t think it was so funny. To this day when I see the a plastic bug I think of the one in the jar on the counter.

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  150. Just what I think is funny, I am terrified of killing bugs… unless I’m the only ‘adult’ around. When I was a camp counselor I had no problem being the bug killing hero… but when I’m with my boyfriend or at home and my dad’s around, I scream!

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  152. Our bug story was from last summer. I went to have my hair cut with my 2 girls after school. After getting my hair washed, blown dry then getting it straightened…. We hear a shrill of terror. Thinking my then 3year old had gotten a hold of something hot and was burned… As we are all looking around and didn’t see any signs of her getting hurt. I was pushing down her old Easter dress and felt something… It was the biggest grass hopper ever was stuck to her dress, then it got on my arm and then I screamed and flung it across the floor!! Luckily for us there was one nan in the hair salon that probably thought we were all crazy.. He picked up the grass hopper and released him to the side of the building. I really don’t think the grasshopper had a chance except for that man who saved it’s life. Needless to say we laugh still about it everytime we go in there. Where is a video camera when you need it. Funniest home videos would have loved it. I have most girliest girls ever I believe. None of like bugs! #RaidBugStory

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  153. Hehe I live in Hawaii and the bug problem is insane! We’ve had a really bad ant problem and now they’re coming in the bathroom window. It’s only 6+ feet up the wall and I have no idea what they’re going after. Well this morning I almost brushed my teeth with an ant. Luckily I noticed movement first!

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  154. I used to manage a chain restaurant in the 90’s part of the protocol was to have monthly bug nights. Pulling the bug night was not a managers favorite job. We had to have the staff WRAP the entire restauran in plastic – EVERYTHING all the tables, linens, pans. One particular time I had bug night, usually we would get out by 2am – this one time I didn’t make it home until the sun was coming up! We had seen a few roaches. so the bug team came and I showed them the area I thought might have a problem, so the guy pulled out his drill and put a hole in the wall…..and out came hundreds of roaches they just started running everywhere. The walls were infested! I had no where to run, so I jumped on the counter and screamed like a girl. They continued to drill holes in various walls and I sat there surrounded by roaches all over the floor, it was like a horror movie. Salt in my wound the bug “guy” was cute and I was interested until I saw his job up close and personal. No way was I going ot go out with him, I felt like insects were crawling on me for days

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  155. I work at a daycare where we were having brownies for snack, a little boy walked up to me in the kitchen to give me his cup and I pointed at him and told him that he had a bug on his neck. He misunderstood me and thought I said brownie, picked up the bug and popped it in his mouth…needless to say I screamed, grabbed a napkin and he made one of the funniest faces I’ve seen him make haha got to love kids!!

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  156. When we moved to Florida, I reminded my husband that I don’t really deal with monster sized bugs well. I could handle the Chicago bugs fine. Seriously? They are tiny compared to FL bugs. So one day at school, I actually made it to use the restroom during the school day, between supervising lunch shifts. I pretty much have no break from the time I aarive until the time I leave. I sat down, pants around my ankles and took a breath, as I looked down and watched a huge roach run over my feet. Since I was in mid-stream, there wasn’t mucu I could do other than act like a girl and scream (which I hate doing!!) Naturally, this brought people running from the office to find a locked bathroom door…and they were panicking about what was happening on my side of that door. Luckily, I gathered myself , without soiling my pants as I was trying to end stream and get my pants back up, before they were able to break into the bathroom.

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  158. Listen up Waterbugs. The moral of my story is YOU need to stay out of people’s homes or their pets will shorten your lives.

    My first experience with this was with my cute, cream colored cocker spaniel. I turned to see him one day with something black sticking out of his mouth. As I approached him I realized that he was holding a large waterbug halfway in his mouth. The bug was still alive because his legs were wriggling. When I said “Muffin, what do you have in your mouth?”, he gave me such a “What, me?” look. He ran away with his bug. I later found it dead in a bedroom. This happened severl more times.

    Years later, my big gray tabby cat did the same thing. She though only transported them to hardwood floors so she could bat them around like hockey pucks. Sometimes they got away and sometimes not.

    I never could let my pets “kiss” me (lick my face) after having seen this but amnesia would eventually kick in and a day later it was a love fest.

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  159. I have a funny bug story. I was living in a dorm for girls and working in Salt Lake City, Utah. Several of us decided to rent an apartment together and become roommates, and so it was that we rented an apartment and made our plans.

    In the meantime, a good friend from the dorm (who wasn’t moving) along with several others were carpooling to our various homes for a weekend visit. The day was warm and lovely, and we were enjoying our time together, laughing and joking and just having a wonderful trip.

    In the midst of our sharing fun stores, my friend suddenly said, “Don’t move!” She meant don’t move out of the dorm, but I thought she meant don’t move there is a big, hairy, monstrous sort of ugly bug on you that is ready to go for the jugular. So naturally I freaked out. I screamed, “Get it off! Get it off!” Well, everyone else was dumbfounded because they couldn’t see anything on me, so they just sat there (well, the driver did keep on driving, thank goodness). As I remember I escalated my pleas until I was nearly in tears.

    Finally, my friend figured it out, explained herself while calming me down. Then we laughed ourselves silly over such a misunderstanding. As you can tell, I am not a person who deals well with the dear bugs of our planet, especially spiders.

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  163. I often wish I had a video of the time I tried to kill a wasp with hair spray. I still laugh every time I remember it…. I ended up “hairspraying” an entire room and the wasp? Well, his “do” was looking good and he continued to fly and live on. I kept thinking that when it dried he would be stuck at least, but nope. Must have been “flexible hold”….. hehehe, still laughing….

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  164. When I was 6 1/2 months pregnant with my son, hubby and I went on vacation to the Dominican Republic. I was exhausted when we finally got to the hotel, so I crawled into bed for a nap. An hour or so later when I woke up, I looked up at the ceiling to see a spider the size of my hand directly above me. I screamed and was out of the bed as quickly as possible.

    We had to call the hotel staff because we were too scared of this enormous creepy crawlie to get rid of it. Even after they assured me it was gone, I could barely sleep the whole week!

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  165. My husband and I were just married and decided to honeymoon in sunny Florida. The hotel where we stayed was beautiful, that is, until we spotted the hugest palmetto bug in the world. Howie tried to kill it with hairspray as it was the only thing we had that might do any good. The only thing it did was get that the bug to smell nice! Then we decided to call housekeeping and told them what was going on. I was screaming quite a bit and I’m betting the people in the hotel thought we were having a wild time. 🙂 Finally, the maid brought us Raid and it worked right away. The poor fellow was dead and we were at peace. We tried to get it to leave with newspaper, but it wouldn’t go. Maybe because it was raining outside. We’re just glad we had a happy ending, though we felt badly for the bug…Thanks, Raid. You saved our honeymoon!

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  166. We moved from California to Texas when I was a kid, or we can describe it as “from roaches the size of grapenuts to roaches the size of a large candy bar”. One day my dad was reading on the couch, and when he looked up to answer one of us kids one of those 4-inch long flying cockroaches smacked right into the bridge of his glasses! THWAP!
    In the following excitement, it even managed to get away.

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  167. My creepy story happened when I went to Miami to take care of something for my parents. I was staying at my parent’s friends house who are basically like family. The think is that they are super old fashion. Their grass was so tall that I had no idea why they didn’t have creepers all over the place. So I went to bed that night with a nice cup of tea and I was to go back home the next day. While I was sleeping I just felt a little itchy on my stomach from time to time. It got so annoying that I thought I was sweating too much (remember Miami around August and no AC in my room), that I woke up to change into something lighter. When I turned on the light, right there in the middle of the bed was a cockroach, a huge one. I am really scared of cockroaches and never saw them that big before. Now the stupid pest starting flying all over the place and I put a towel in my mouth to scream because i didn’t want to wake up my parent’s friends (him and his wife) because I didn’t want them to feel insulted (really old fashion folks). So here I am running in circle in the room, screaming through a towel and scared for my life because the cockroach was just flying all over the room. I cracked the door open finally and he/she left.
    I was seriously petrified, so much that I spent the whole night sleeping on the corner sitting down with a sheet over my head because I did not want the cockroach to eat me. I know I am bigger than the cockroach but I am seriously scared of them.

    When the couple woke up, I skipped breakfast, called a cab and went to the train station as fast as I could to get away from the cockroach that haunted me through the night.

    THE END

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  168. My family has moved to Alaska one year and started building a small cabin, so this one summer when i was 16 yrs old, our small cabin was invaded by what seemed like thousands of ants, during the night. I still remember how, while I was sleeping they were crawling on my face, I just brushed them off not even know that it was ants. When i woke up I saw them EVERYWHERE, On my bed, walls, floor maybe even a few where on me. I started screaming of course. Got out of bed and the ants where everywhere. So my job was to RAID all around the cabin and inside. Will never forget that summer! LOL

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  169. I moved to South Carolina from Michigan almost 5 years ago. We have bugs up north, but NOT like they do down here. My first month here, I was renting a room in a woman’s home out in the country. It was steamy, hot and humid that August of 2006 and I grew to HATE the walk from my car to my door. I saw bugs that could pick up my brother in law and carry him away! There were bugs that flew and their huge wings would flap against your neck (no exaggeration) or creepy crawlies that could scurry up your leg before you knew it. I had the unfortunate experience on more than one occasion of being woken up in the middle of the night with something scratching on my arm…..Oh gosh. This gives me the willies just thinking about that 3 month period. UGH.

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  172. I am TERRIFIED of spiders. It’s so bad I have dreams about spiders. The problem is I don’t know if I’m awake & they are real or I’m hallucinating or if I’m asleep & dreaming, but I always end up on the floor trying to get away from these spiders
    One night (when I was still married), I screamed & fell to the floor & the ex was wondering what was wrong, so I told him there was a spider. So he starts looking around for a spider, and I was like “no this was a HUGE spider like those huge spiders in the old Tarzan movies.
    One night, my youngest daughter was sleeping with me when I had one of these dreams/hallucinations & spiders (a lot of little spiders) were crawling in her hair, so being the good mother I am, I started pawing at her hair trying to get these spiders out & she wakes up crying cause I pawing at her hair as fast as I can trying to get these spiders out of her hair, except there were no spiders. (Yes, my girls think I”m insane.)
    Another time, I was in bed lying on my back & these spiders started floating down from the ceiling, only they were hot pink & lime green. Yes, they were pretty, but they were still spiders & I ended up on the floor trying to get away from them.

    No wonder I wake up in the morning still tired 🙂

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  173. The very first time I went to a movie alone with a boy, it was to see The Wrath of Con. There was one scene in the movie that involved bugs in the ear. I had a horrific nightmare that evening and my fear of bugs in or near my ears has not diminished all these MANY years later. To this day, when a mosquito or black fly goes near my ear I feel like I’m going to vomit. I blame this irrational fear completely on that movie. My husband and kids laugh hysterically whenever they see the movie listed on the channel guide and threaten me with it. They may be joking, but it’s no joke to me. If I could “unwatch” one thing, it would be that movie!

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  175. Not sure if my story will make you laugh…or cry….I grew up in Brazil, in a country house so there were a lot of bugs around but one night, when I was 10 years old, after taking a shower I grabbed my towel and as I was drying myself up I started to feel some pain/burn on my right thigh. Not sure of what was happening I started to scream, my older brother and my mom came in, they looked at my leg and couldn’t see anything, but the pain kept getting worst, so my brother took the towel and shook it and out of it falls a little yellow scorpion, yes a scorpion. I started to cry, not because of the pain but because I had just learned in science class about scorpions and how dangerous they were. My brother took the scorpion and put it in a empty jam glass and meanwhile I kept hugging my mom, telling her how much I loved her and that I knew I was going to die, for her to forgive me for all my acting up ( can you imagine my poor mom). They put me i the car and drove me to the ER . It was a 30 minutes drive and I cried all the way there…i couldnt belive I was going to die so young. The doctor saw me right away and when he saw the scorpion ( we brought the glass with us) he laughed, said it was a baby scorpion and that I didnt even need an antidote, but that I was very lucky and that the burnt I was feeling was going away soon. Oh boy was I happy!! Needless to say that I took the glass with the scorpion to class the next day and told the whole class how was to be stung by a scorpion 🙂

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  176. This is just a plain, horrible story. Quite a few years ago, I started noticing a bunch of bees buzzing around the house. I had a little one at the time and started to worry he would get stung. It seemed to be getting worse and within a week, we knew something was really wrong. I was having to keep the vacuum close by to suck them up. We took a walk around the house and we saw the problem. They were coming in through a little place near the attic that the roofer hadn’t calked well the summer before. We had to get into our attic to check out how bad it was. Well it was bad. Their nest, or whatever it is called was huge!!!! So big that we actually called to see if we could get someone out to get rid of it. It was over a holiday weekend and no one would come out. We couldn’t wait so my husband bombed the attic a couple of times and then armed with a 5 gallon bucket and the baby monitor (so that I could hear him scream and call 911 if need be), he went in and started disassembling it. He had to make two trips. It was that big!!! Of course it wasn’t quite the end. They had gotten in the wall (no wall barriers as our house was so old), and they were crawling into our bathroom. We had to seal off the bathroom and I would go in there every hour or so to kill more. It took a week before we were able to get them all out. Horrible!!! My husband seriously became my hero.

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  179. While visiting my mother-in-law in the hospital in Florida my husband and I went to an ocean-side restaurant and tiki bar for dinner before going back to the hospital for the remainder of the night. Not thinking anything of it upon finishing our meal, we get back into the car and roll the windows down and start to head over the 6 lane causeway bridge to go back to the mainland from the island. Just as the red light clearing the bridge turns green, a 8 1/2 inch in diameter Florida Brown Recluse spider comes walking in my passenger side window. As i straddle the back of my seat attempting to crawl in the back seat my husband sees it and began to freak-out just as bad as i was, however at this point traffic is flowing and we’re in the middle lane. We planned on pulling over to kill the poisonous and ridiculously HUGE spider once we safely got to the other side of the inter-coastal water way, but the spider had other plans; as soon as we broke 25 mph the spider started running full speed across the dash board towards my husband whose freaking out like a girl. We crossed into the lane to our left, almost side swiped the barrier but managed to smash the massive spider with a plastic grocery bag before my husband and i bug bombed our car like 5 times before driving it again…….. we kept the spider for some time as a momentum of our “courage” and proof that my husband is scared of spiders… plus it was cool to show this massive spider to all our friends who thought we were exaggerating its’ size.

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  182. Our son Parker has always loved bugs. In fact he had an extensive collection of dead ones. One day I opened my cosmetic bag to find a former member of his collection ( a HUGE cicada carcass!) lying on top of my make-up. I screamed! I then called for Parker proudly keeping my composure and calmly explained that he had in fact “gotten me” and while it was funny, would he please refrain from putting any bugs dead or alive on my stuff. To this he replied “OH, so does that means I should probably take the dead moth off of your pillow and the dead grasshopper off of your toothbrush, and ….” ACCCKKKKKKKK, composure gone.”YES, PLEASE!!!!” As my husband is rolling around laughing. It is funny now!

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  183. I hate bugs. They creep me out so much. To my horror, I started noticing little fuzzy things on the walls in the house. Then I started finding little beetle like bugs on our window sills, most of them dead. I think that I have finally figured out what they are, carpet beetles. The fuzzy things are the larval form of the bug. They eat things like cotton, but also things like cat dander if I understand correctly. I no longer have a cat, but I can’t seem to get rid of the bugs…

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  184. I was very young (that’s my excuse)and I felt a tick on top of my head.
    Dad wasn’t home to save me so I panicked.
    I had always heard if you light a match…blow it out then stick it to the tick…it will let go.
    I could smell burning hair and some was falling out but the tick was still there.
    They lied.
    I was almost entering coniption fit mode.
    What to do was racing through my mind.
    So I got in the ice box and got out a new jar of Miracle Whip.
    You heard that too?
    LOL
    When my father finally arrived home and walked in the door he found me sitting at the kitchen table crying w/an extra large glob of Miracle Whip sitting on top of my head.
    His response: What are you doing?
    I cryed more…and said: I’m smothering my ticks.
    He just shook his head…wiped the Miracle Whip from my burnt hair and pulled the tick loose.
    I quit crying as I was finally saved.

    Yes…I really did that. :O/

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  185. My husband and I had just gone to bed when the cat started sniffing around at something. We ignored it for awhile figuring the cat was going after a dustball or something. But then I looked down as the cat headed for our white bedspread and a GIANT wolf spider started crawling up the side of our bed! This thing was was at least 3-inches wide, with legs. I am not afraid of spiders and just wanted to get it outside before the cat ate it. My husband, however, wanted it dead. As I was trying to get the cat into the bathroom, my husband had gone to get a pan from the kitchen. So when we passed in the hallway, I was on my way to get some sort of container with a lid, he had his weapon. I returned to the bedroom just in time to see him beat the crap out of the poor little bugger – right on the very white bedspread! Ugh! After removing the bedspread, we tried to go to sleep but the cat angry with us for taking his kill LOL

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  186. a long time ago we owned an iguana and once we went to clean out his metal cage and their were hundreds of roaches, eeeeeewwwwww and the thing is we have NO idea how they got there as we didn’t have them in the house before and have never seen the until then, yikes!!

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  187. Go on over to 5 Minutes for Mom and share your bug related story for a chance to win a gift card! #RaidBugStory Tweeted for ya 🙂

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  188. Okay well.. This takes place in Florida. I have always tried to be calm about these things.. until they are on my person! Well I had just loaded my son’s laundry in the washer and sat down at the computer to finish writing and talk with my husband. My son was there too. I thought I felt something on my side around my waistband and I brushed at it. Well I felt something hard and something bit… I raised my shirt up and it was a Scorpion!! On me!!!! HAHAHHAAHAHAHHHH Well I freaked out and ended up screaming and pulling off my pants to get it off me but not before it stung me twice. I have since found out these things like water and are typically found in the bathroom. ughhh… So I check everything by shaking it in the bathroom or before putting it on….

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  190. Last year my husband and I were sitting on the couch having a relaxing evening watching a movie, when a giant wolf spider crawled up his pant leg (the INSIDE). We both totally freaked out, and now every time we cuddle to watch a movie I’m always afraid there is a big giant spider in our future. Thank you for the lovely giveaway.
    sewmuchstuff at ymail dot com

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  191. I am 54 and have had a lot of bug tales but last year I heard one on local TV that beat any of mine. This boy about 8 in Salem OR had problems with his ear so the doctor checked and their was a spider living in his ear!!! They got it out and the brave young man showed it on TV…totally grossed me out and beat any bug stories I have had.

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  192. Long time ago in a faraway land called Punta Gorda Florida my mom and I lived together… I saw a huge spider, and I mean HUGE.. A Florida spider, Did I say a HUGE spider.. well my mom and I went after it.. We were brave and we were going to kill said HUGE spider.. We chased it, it would run away, and then stop and jump at us.. Well it ran in the laundry room. LIving in a trailer we had the vents on the floor and ceiling.. This HUGE spider made it’s escape down the vent.. Later on when lying in bed I looked up and there was the air vent right above my face.. All I could think of was that spider creeping out and falling all over my face…. I slept on the couch that nite..

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  193. My bug story involves my son who was three years old. We were visiting friends in Florida so we were taking lots of pictures. My son was standing for a picture in front of our friends new house. We took the picture and came home when we downloaded and printed the picture there was the biggest roach I had ever seen in my life on the wall behind my son. Honestly,it looked like it could carry him away it was so huge.
    carolkfoster at comcast dot net

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  194. My house isn’t “sealed up” very well for whatever reason, so there are lots of places for bugs to crawl in from outside. I learned this the hard way when, after leaving the back door open a crack one hot summer day, I went into the kitchen for a snack and found myself staring down a cockroach under my kitchen table. I swear, we had a stand-off… and then he apparently called in his friends as back-up or something because he was joined by at least five more.

    I didn’t have any Raid so the the best option at the time was to run screaming to my bedroom. I stayed in there the rest of the day.

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  195. One night I was lying in bed reading Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. Anansi is a spider trickster in African mythology. I felt this tickling so I looked down and was COVERED in baby spiders. Needless to say, I was totally creeped out!

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  196. We were traveling through Arkansas one time and got in late to our motel not far from rice fields. When we went to bed, we kept noticing mosquitoes and would get up to kill them, lay down, then notice more and get up to kill them. This happened for an hour or so. We counted over 100 mosquitoes. The next morning when we went to get our continental breakfast, there were even a few mosquitoes in the milk. The owner acted like it was no big deal, but it was a big deal to us. We learned to never stay there again!

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  197. I think the funniest to me was about 5 years ago.
    I was at work and a friend of mine called me totally freaking out! Like, having a panic attack, not able to breath…
    I LEFT WORK to go see what was going on…
    I got there and there was a little cockroach that she saw in her living room… She had trapped it under a glass and was standing on her kitchen table, still in a panic when I got there…
    I handled it, but then I had to crack up laughing at her… 30 something years old and totally in a for real panic!!!!
    Needless to say, we bought plenty of raid and she was to calmly use that the next time…
    Not to say I did not get calls more after that, I just had to coach her through it… and yes, I did warn her “boyfriend” at the time, so he knew what he was getting into when he proposed!!!!

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  198. My creepy and scary bug story is when my Mom came in our home one day from doing some yard work. She went in the bathroom to clean up. I heard her yell my name and I went in. She said her leg was on fire, that something just bite her. She shook her pant leg and out fell a large black bug. She said I didn’t think crickets bite. I looked down at the bug. It was a monsterous size black widow spider. She’d killed it when she slapped her leg right after it bite. I scooped it up with toliet paper and put it in a zip lock bag. We hurried to the Doctor. My mom lived, but she was in misery for about three months. The Doctor gave her several medications, but still you have severe nerve pain and muscle spasms. The Doctor said that was the biggest black widow he’d ever saw. He asked if he could give it to a professor at the university, as he studied bugs. We said sure, we didn’t want it. He called my mom a few days later and said, she was lucky to be alive, as that black widow was about five times larger than a normal black widow and since my mom only weighed about a hundred pounds soaking wet, she’d was lucky the venom didn’t kill her. He said if it had bite her up higher on the leg, he thought she would have died.

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  199. Once when I was a kid, I went and got my favorite pair of jeans off of the clothesline on a bright sunny day. I took them in the house and when I went to put them on, as I put my leg into the pants, I felt a sticky cotton candy type of stuff on my foot. Turns out, a spider had woven a gross nest of that white stuff. I could not get my leg out of the pants fast enough. Every time I wore those jeans afterward, I always checked them inside and out, just in case!

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  200. On a camping trip with my family when I was a little girl, there were nine of us traveling in a Station Wagon and camping through a trip from Washington State to Colorado. In the car one evening while driving I felt something crawling on me and looked down on my shirt to see this huge beetle crawling up my chest. This beetle must have been at least 3 inches long, the biggest I’d ever seen and it scared the life out of me. I brushed it off me and it went flying around that station wagon landing on each of us in turn and back again until my dad had had enough and finally pulled over to stop our screaming and let that beetle out of the car. Though the screaming may have died down after that, the creepy crawly feeling persisted for weeks and I continued looking for bugs to make sure I stayed away from them.

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  201. I have very poor eyesight wihtout my contacts in. I got up one morning to wash my face, grabbed a washcloth, and when it got about an inch from my face (when I could see detail), there was a daddy longlegs! Needless to say I threw the washcloth across the bathroom.

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  202. The night I arrived with my three children and niece to our vacation destination was quite eventful and unsettling. The three girls were sharing a room together. After haggling over which beds everyone gets, the girls were ready to get in a bed. As soon as I walked out, I heard a commotion. I thought they were bickering again when I came back in the room. My oldest daughter was telling the youngest one to get out of the bed. She was very demanding in her voice. “Leaver her alone I say”. My daughter says, “No Mom, there is a really big spider on her bed. The younger daughter jumps out of the bed just when we see a huge spider crawl on to the pillow. It kind of stops and looks at us. Poor Emma screams bloody murder running. My son comes running from the other side of the house scared to death. My husband has not yet arrived to our destination so I have to be the savior and get that spider out of there! It was as big as my hand, all eight legs of it. I run for a paper towel and swoop in and whisk it up. I run to the toilet and flush it down – risking a clog because it was a paper towel. NOBODY wanted that bed or that room. If I wasn’t rational, I think I would have loaded back up and drove all the way home. Needless to say, Emma slept with me the whole trip!

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  205. None of the bug stories I could tell are humorous (in my opinion). What immediately comes to mind: while on a visit to the in-laws in MN, my middle daughter & I were fighting off mosquitoes. When I complained about all the bugs/bug bites to my husband, he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about! Apparently, the mosquitoes don’t bug the natives–only the foreigners. My daughter had welts all over her body from these bites.
    I also remember when my daughters got head lice. I was horrified. Thankfully my next-door neighbor, a stay-at-home dad, offered to check their scalps and he also said I could do laundry at his house (because, of course, my washer & dryer were going to be in use for the next several hours).
    Finally, a scary bug story: My daughter got bit by a brown recluse spider (this was when she was at Ft. Lee, I believe). When her Sgt saw redness on her thigh, he made her go to the hospital. There, she was given an antibiotic that caused her to have an anaphylactic reaction which resulted in her being hospitalized for days.
    These are probably not the kind of bug stories you were looking for, but it’s what comes to mind for me. Thanks for the giveaway.

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  206. A barn spider the size of a silver dollar made a web across my front door. I didn’t see the web or the spider until the spider hit be in the face & bit me. This is also how I found out that I’m allergic to barn spiders. Within a half hour that little bite was the size of a softball! I’m now spider-phobic but working on it.

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  207. Well in college my hubby and I were dating. I lived in the country 20 minuntes from town. Just as I was about to step into the shower, I saw a HUGE spider. I freaked and called my then boyfriend (now hubby) and demanded he come rescue me by killing it. He refused and I literally wanted to break up with him because of it.Yes I was and still am deathly afraid of spiders and he has since learned to come kill one for me if I ask! 🙂

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  208. when my son was little, he was scared to death of bugs. if we put a plastic bug toy on someplace he wasn’t supposed to go it was like putting up safety nets! early one summer, we were having a bbq, and he was out “helping” his dad with the bbq, and my friend and i were in the kitchen getting stuff ready. thru the screen door he started yelling “mom, a gug, a gug!” and i told him to step on it. my friend looked up & then elbowed me. it was a crane fly and my son was hopping around on one leg trying to stomp the bug out of the sky. my friend and i both cracked up!

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  212. Hubby and I were making our first visit to Maui in beautiful Hawaii. We decided to stay in a Bed and Breakfast just off the beach instead of a hotel or condo. It was a lovely home and we’d booked the “garden room” with it’s own private tropical outdoor space. We arrived to a warm greeting by the host who showed us the public areas of the home and our lovely room with tropical bliss just outside the door. After we were settled he asked us to join him and brought out a binder. He proceeded to explain that he lived “organically” which meant…no bug sprays on the property. The mysterious binder contained photos of insects we might see, especially in our little garden. No problem, though, they stayed outside…mostly. Since we were in the garden room it was more likely that we would see some creepy crawlys in there. He showed us some photos and said not to worry unless we saw one in particular, the Hawaiian version of a centipede. In my experience centipedes were cute, little fuzzy creatures with lots of feet that curl up in your hand when you pick them up. Not here! These centipedes are big and they bite. It would be extremely painful and poisonous! Great. Our host assured us that it was very rare to see one and not to worry. “If you see one” he said,”just come get me.”

    We had a wonderful time on the island and didn’t give the centipede another thought, until the seventh day. I woke up to warm sunshine streaming through the windows. I put my foot out on the floor and rose to traverse to the bathroom. That’s when I saw it! There it was! Halfway between my foot and the bathroom door lay the monstrous, poisonous Hawaiian centipede. Good Lord, that thing was eight inches long. I swear it was looking at me and laying in wait. I froze. Then I screamed and jumped up on the bed. I was not going anywhere. Hubby bolted upright to see what was the matter. The centipede in question scurried into the closet. Hubby turned into a knight in shining armour and threw a towel over the offending creature before he ran upstairs to get our host. I stayed put on the bed and kept guard over the towel.

    It wasn’t more than a minute before Hubby returned, sans the host. His helpful reply had been, “Well, kill it!” Goody…how are we supposed to do that? Hubby found a container to scoop the offending bug up. Now what? I didn’t want it thrown outside cause I knew it would just come right back in and we still had another night to sleep there. Ah, the pocket knife! He’ll stab it. Easier said than done. Ever try to stab a wriggling, poisonous bug? It’s not easy and Hubby quickly learned that this bug had skin like rubber. To make matters worse, one stab wound wasn’t going to kill this thing. He had to actually cut it into pieces and the thing sill wriggled for awhile. During the little sleep I got that night I had dreams of being invaded by an army of Hawaiian centipedes, perhaps regrown from the one we’d killed.

    I’ve been to Hawaii several times since, including Maui. I haven’t seen another one, but I am always on the lookout!

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  213. My hatred of spiders began when I was around 6 or 7 years old while laying on the floor under a beam that stretched across our family room a spider fell on my face right between the eyes….I am convinced that somehow I have been cursed as I have had more horrible experiences with spiders throughout my life then any one individual should have to endure. The worst was when i was 21 and living by myself on the third floor of an apartment building. After living there for a month or two I would encounter these rather large spiders builing webs on my balcony every night. It started with one or two and then progressed to five or six at which point I had called my parents crying about the tarantula sized spiders infesting where I lived. After several minutes of laughing at me and the “size” of the spider I described they recommended I contact the property manager to have the place exterminated. I contacted them the next day and was told that they would send someone to spray while I was at work. Feeling better about the situation, the next night I deciided to pull back the curtains and go outside to enjoy my balcony only to find more spiders and there webs. Several more nights and several more attempts to exterminate had no effect on these relentless spiders. Did I mentioned that noone believed me that they even existed since the only time they came out was at night? After a futile attempt with a shoebox to capture one of the nasty suckers to have proof, I gave up and resigned myself to having to live with this until my lease was up. Hey, at least they were not inside my place, right? Well they never did get in but upon returning home from work to have lunch one day I had to pee so bad that I was taking two steps at a time to the top floor as I rounded the corner to my door I was stopped dead in my tracks by a web covering the door from practically top to bottom with one of those dreaded spiders sitting in the middle. OMG!!!! I ran back down to the parking lot where two men were walking to their car to ask them if they had a broom or some bugspray because a spider won’t let me into my apartment.. Again I was laughed at not taking seriously. One of the men went back to his place and retrieved a broom and can of bugspray and proceeded to go up to my door to kill the so called spider keeping me from gainging access. As I stood in the parking lot with the other man we watched as his friend nearly jumped the railing when he finally came face to face with the spider, then tried to beat it to death with the broom and unloaded the whole entire can of bugspray on it before it still got away. Needless to say I finally got a witness (who btw was not laughing when he came back down ) to prove I was not crazy and moved from the apartment shortly after.

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  215. TRUE STORY: We try hard to avoid chemicals because we live near a water source. I tolerate creepy crawly outsiders, just don’t cross the threshold into MY space!

    I was letting the pups out after dark one night. I opened the door and a BIG spider waltzed in. Not a fan of spiders, I took a deep breath, grabbed one of the man’s big shoes and smashed the Spider. I was VERY proud of myself that I was doing all of this without screaming and waking up the children. Only to realize MAMA SPIDER had one point six millions junior spiders on her back and now they are going every which way.

    I sprinted to the kitchen cabinet, grabbed the RAID, dashed back and sprayed and sprayed every inch of the door, threshold and foyer.

    UGH! I thought those things only happened in horror films! Film at eleven. maggieb!

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  217. Okay, my “Bug” story is set Jacksonville, Florida. The south is known for our big bugs & let me tell ya we have some BIG BUGS! When I was about 8 or 9 I was lying in bed one night & was woke up by a strange sound. At first I ignored it but then I heard it again fluttering around my room! The sound was like a thin paper winged critter flying into the walls of my room. AHHHH! I was so scared because then I knew what it was. It was a HUGE palmetto roach bug. I was just paralized with fear. Not just because of the bug flying around the room but because of the dark. I wanted to yell for my dad but was affraid to beacause I did not want the bug to fly into my mouth! EWWW & gross! Finally I got the nerve to scream out for my dad & he came running & got the Raid roach spray & killed that sucker dead! YEA, daddy to the rescue! The End 🙂

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  218. When I was a 19 year old bride, I moved with my husband to Dallas from Oklahoma. One night as we were on the balcony of our apartment, this HUGE thing came flying at my head. It was one of Texas’s infamous grass roaches and it was at least two inches long. I screamed. Then proceeded to beat my husband with a pillow (safely indoors) while yelling “You didn’t tell me that the roaches flew in Texas!”

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  219. When I was fresh out of college with no job offers to speak of, I ended up moving back in with my parents for a while and living in the basement. Cliche, right? Well, they neglected to tell me that in the 4 years I was gone, they had developed what I would consider to be a fairly aweful problem with ants! I woke up in the middle of the second night I was sleeping there covered with huge black ants and I freaked the hell out. I must have woken up the whole neighborhood and a cop car rolled by later because one of our neighbors thought someone was being murdered or something. I moved back out the next day! It took years, but now we joke that my folks had the ants delivered to scare me off again. The ended up getting an exterminator to take care of the problem a few days later and use Raid for touchups as necessary and haven’t had any issues since. I never moved back again and I still don’t like to visit.

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  221. I don’t have a bug story about myself because they really don’t bother me that much…but, my hubby is another story. We’ve been married almost 30 years and I can’t tell you how many times he’s woken me up in the niddle of the night because there was a spider or a cockroach in the house. Ummm, yes…he sits on the bed or the couch while I kill it. My funny story happened several years ago. My mom and 20 something nephew were at our house…my dh had just come home and I was in the back room. I hear screaming and run into the living room. My dh is screaming, jumping up and down and swatting at his shorts. My mom and nephew are looking at him like he’s crazy and when I realized what was going on I started laughing so hard I was crying. He looked like he was trying to do some sort of crazy dance.Turns out a bumblebee (the big black kind) had crawled up his shorts leg and was trying to get out. My hubby lost all of his “coolness” in my nephew’s eyes that day.

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  222. I woke up to a black beetle crawling across the covers in front of my face when I was about 13 years old. I freaked out and from then on had to whip the covers back on my bed every night and check for bugs. I also couldn’t eat raisens for a very long time because the color and shape reminded me of that beetle! I still can’t stand beetles, I can handle other bugs but not beetles!

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  223. Miss A is deathly terrified of bugs, has been since last year (age 3) in fact we had a crying episode today at a restaurant because there were flies nearby….one of the reasons I hate warmer weather. She’s sooooo scared!

    The worst episode happened when we were in the van on our way home. A ladybug (cute to us but terrifying to her) got into the car and she was crying hysterically, screaming and freaking out, I pulled the car over as soon as I could and tried to get the ladybug out but it ended up being stuck on the van door and I didn’t know it, so again hysterics all the way home. Needless to say she took a great nap after all the crying that day, but my poor girl, I wish I could calm her fears, we love bug spray, sorry bugs!!

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  224. Mine isn’t so much a moment, as a series of them! After moving into my newly built (and first of my own) home in 2006, I found that the new construction had stirred up many of the bugs/creatures living on my land (nearly 4 acres of undeveloped land in a rural area of Florida). The first week of living there, I killed 2 scorpions attempting to enter my front door. After screaming like a girly-girl, I quickly dispatched them with my shoe…then threw away those shoes. Week two, I found several spiders trying to hone in on my place — some normal, but several freakish (black widows, wood spiders [they are HUGE], etc.). Even after shoe-killing (which I had to realize I couldn’t throw away every pair I killed with) I invested in a lot of granule bug killer to spread around the perimeter of my house, cans of Raid and then eco-friendly traps! It’s very difficult to see anything in the carpeted rooms, because the carpet is dark forest green, sapphire and burgandy in those rooms. After a couple of months of living there (and becoming more and more paranoid of living and sleeping in my house), I was taking a shower one morning. While applying shampoo to my hair, I felt something move. I whipped my head and it fell to the floor of the shower…a nice, big scorpion. More screaming ensued before I got brace enough to get in and kill it. Needless to day, I finished my shower in the other bathroom. Since then (2006), I have killed more (inside and out) scorpions, spiders, millipedes, centipedes, and a variety of other (what I believe were…according to what photos I could find on the internet to compare them to) dangerous pests known to the region (from 4 legs to a billion) and each and every time, my heart rate speeds to triple digits and I begin to almost hyperventilate!!!!! I hate bugs/pest…but they seem to love me! The builders’ theory had been that new construction and new paint is an attractor…but after 5 years of living there, that theory’s shot! *shudder* I re-make my made bed every night before crawling into it, shake out any pair of shoes I have before putting them on, shake out folded bath towels from my linen closet before using them, etc. All of these precautions have helped to prevent me from getting bit by any of these yet (that and a good helping of luck, I believe), but I am knocking on the proverbial wood just in case!

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  225. Wow… I HATE bugs. Who doesn’t (besides bug people of course). When I was 13 years old, we went camping as a family and decided to ride a large log down the river. We are comfortably riding along when I here “oh God, oh Jesus” and loud breating from behind me. I turn around to see whats the matter and there, on my back was a spider the size of a small horse (this is NOT an exageration). It was a water siper and it was HUGE. I immediately did what any smart girl would do and I jumped off the log and into the water (while creaming hysterically and waving my arms). I swam to shore swearing I would never EVER get back into nature made ponds, lakes, rivers…. Well….The only way to get back to the camp site was to either A.) get back in the water and swim (ummm….no. Just took a solemn oath to not do that) or B.) Walk through a corn field. I selected B. Oh, did I mention I am allergic to the silk strands on corn. So, I walked back to the campsite and spent the rest of the weekend broke out in hives because no way was I getting into the water to rinse the corn strands off of me (again…. Binding, solemn oath).

    I hate bugs…

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  227. This #RaidBugStory comes from college days, living in downtown Philadelphia. My very first apartment, a brownstone walkup near Rittenhouse Sq., was shared with a Drexel student of fashion design and fine arts, while I was at Temple U studying film. On the ground floor there was one tenant, an older woman with special needs and a great sense of humour, and above us the soon to be famous Buddhist Punk Rock band named Ruin. We both had a crush on Glen, a poet with steely blue eyes and jet black hair. Top floor, a student of the french horn. We knew, along with all of us inhabitants, we were sorely outnumbered by roaches of various types, shapes and sizes. The place was infested, but it didn’t dampen our excitement of being out on our own. While timid at first, using various utensils to kill them, we soon became quite brave, knocking them dead with the back of our hands. Even got into it by reading Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”. Turns out we both had a film appreciation class taught at both universities by the same teacher. One afternoon, we were both reading from the required text, studying for a mid-term, when we decided to take a break. “Gee, I’m tired of that cloth they have glued to the wall behind the stove/sink unit” I said to my roommate. “Me too!” said my roomie! “Let’s get rid of it!” So we put our books down and each of us took an end and started peeling the ugly orange flowered cloth from the wall. As we did, we heard something like rain almost, and soon discovered that beads of glue from the back of the cloth was coming off the wall and hitting the sink, stove and floor. Ahh but at second glance, these were not beads of glue. . . but roach eggs. Empty roach eggs. Hundreds and hundreds of hatched roach eggs. Each of which we soon learned contained between 40 and 100 or so roach babies. Yes, we just dropped everything, ran out the door leaving our books behind, and spent the rest of the day (and the rest of our money for the month) drinking Gimlets at Penns Landing until we could manage to stumble back home to deal with with something a good deal of gin would help get us through…

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  228. We moved to South Carolina a few years ago and I was completely unfamiliar with the Palmetto Bug. Palmetto trees are nice, right? It didn’t sound too bad. Then I let my dogs out the first night and as soon as I opened the door I was struck in the EYE by a giant, flying roach. GIANT FLYING ROACH!!! In my backyard! Then my neighbor told me oh yeah, you’ve met the palmetto bugs! I was very careful every other time I opened the door, ha.

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  230. My daughter was using her bathroom sink to rinse her mouth after brushing her teeth. She looked down and there were bugs crawling out of the drain pipe and into her cup. The screams were deafening. I ran in thinking the worse. Sure enough, the bugs were coming up by the hundreds. Seems there was some sort of bugs that live in the pipes and ate the tooth paste. The little disgusting things hatched or what ever they do and popped up at that moment. Tiny little things with clear wings. Needless to say, my daughter didn’t go near the sink for a month. Called the bug killing people and they came the next day and got rid of those nasty little things.

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  232. Ok…some of these stories are so good I’m not sure if mine will stand up but here goes: We live in Southern California, in a mobile home. One night a few years back, I had gone to bed early while hubby stayed up to work on the computer. Around 2:30 in the morning he comes in and wakes me up to tell me there is an “animal in distress” crying outside…I told him to leave me alone and rolled back over (lol) only to have him return a few minutes later saying, “you gotta come do something, you don’t work tomorrow, get up!” So I got up and came to see what the fuss was about…as I approached our carport door I could hear the noise….kind of a soft screaming if that’s possible…somewhat intermittent but I could hear it. I turned on the outside light and began to look for what I thought would be a baby bird maybe…that sound was sure strange. I walked out carefully to the edge of the carport to look in the bushes…being careful because I knew there was a large black widow spider web near the ground. As the sound continued, I kept trying to locate it, walking around and turning my head from side to side to pinpoint where the sound came from, now using a flashlight to look…the light caught something shiny near the ground about the same time as the sound came again and I saw the source of all the noise…a HUGE beetle with shiny red eyes was caught in the black widow web, the spider had bitten it, and the beetle WAS SCREAMING OUT OF IT’S BACK END! I’m not usually grossed out by bugs, I used to play with them as a kid, but I never heard a bug scream….I was so creeped out I had to go back in the house and have some warm milk so I could go back to sleep. The next morning I Googled “screaming beetle” and found out it is a six-lined June bug…and they scream. I thought June bugs were just those little golden beetles but I found out I was wrong…and I’ve seen 2 or 3 of those bugs since. They’re about 2 1/2 inches long or so….no joke. *shudders*

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  233. My creepy bug story:
    When I was younger, I was playing outside as a normal child would. A HUGE bumble bee was buzzing around where I and my brothers were playing, and they panicked. Screaming like little girl’s themselves, they ran back from the monsterous bug. I, being a sarcastic brat, stayed where I was, teasing them and saying very matter-of-factly that “if you leave it alone, it will leave you alone”.
    That’s when it happened…. the ungrateful bug flew INTO MY EAR. It stung me, but more importantly, it scared the bejezzus outta me! I screamed and flailed, threw myself on the ground, and finally lie sobbing as my older brother’s took pity on me and got my dad. He came out, removed the bee, stepped on its already dying body and took me inside.
    My ear was so swollen that I lived with a stinger within my ear for a whole weekend until I returned home to my mom’s house. She promptly removed the STILL pulsing stinger from my inflamed ear, and with ample hugs and reassurances, life went on…. mostly bee free.
    NIKIA

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  235. I moved from NC to Texas in 1984 and was not familiar with those nasty pests known as fire ants. I was in my early twenties and enjoyed going barefoot. The weather was warm and I decided to go get the mail with out shoes. I stepped in an ant bed, but did not think much of it, after all ants never bothered me before. It was just a matter of seconds and my legs began to burn! I looked down and I was covered with ants, fire ants and they were biting me! I ran to the apartment pool and washed the ants off but I already had hundreds of bites. After that, I always wore my shoes and waged war on the fire ant.

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  237. My bug story – is a spider a bug? Officially, it’s an arachnid, but I had one creep me out in high schoo, giving me a complete terror of the things ever since. Zoology class, and the teacher, one Mrs. Tosto, brought in a tarantula to show off to the class. It’s crawling around on the lab table, and at that point, I’m not too thrilled by spiders anyhow, but I’m not totally creeped out by them. So I’m standing at the back of the group of students “admiring” this thing, and it spots ME. It starts crawling across the table to ME. Me, the one who doesn’t like spiders and creepy-crawleys at all anyhow, and it’s heading straight for me. It drops off the lab table onto the top of a student desk that’s butted up to the lab table. I’m about two desks back. Nobody wants to grab it, and the Mrs. T. can’t get through the kids to get it fast enough. It drops onto the seat of the desk, then to the floor. I’m backing away from the Hairy Buick With Legs that was growing bigger by the SECOND, as fast as I can, turned and leaped over a couple of desks in my way and headed for the door at a dead run. I WAS OUTTA THERE. Last thing I recall is running down the hallway shrieking in terror and hoping like heck it wasnt following me.

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  238. I will never forget the phone conversation I had with my wife a few weeks ago. I had called her from work to check in her. (She was pregnant with our sixth baby at the time.) I asked if everything was ok, and she proceeded to tell me that a wasp had gotten in the house. Being pregnant, she didn’t want to use any harsh chemicals to kill the wasp, so she grabbed the next best thing: Spry Butter. Apparently, she loaded the wasp up with butter until he couldn’t move, and then she put a coffee mug over top of him so he couldn’t get away. She then decided she was just going to leave it there so that I could take care of it when I got home. Only she would think to kill a wasp with spray butter!

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  239. I am TERRIFIED of bugs, literally I feel like I could have a heart attack when they come around. Does not matter the type or size, I FREAK!!!! A couple months ago, some of my co-workers thought it would be funny to place a grasshopper in my chair at my desk. I pulled my chair out to sit down and the hopper jumped on my shirt. I danced around screaming for no less than 5 minutes until they finally screamed out that it was gone. I wouldn’t sit back down at the desk for weeks! To this day they call me hopper, and laugh about it constantly!

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  240. When I was a young kid I was laying with my stepmom on her bed. We heard this squeaking & scratching sound but couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. About the time she looked straight back and up a water bug landed square in the middle of her forehead. We both screamed. It had gotten wedged between the wall and a hanging picture and was trying to hang on but lost it’s fight. I’m so glad it was her and not me!

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  241. When I was about 8 years old I was running in circles on my patio. I was screaming while running. All of a sudden a fly, a bee or some other kind of little insect with wings slammed into the back of my throat. I came to a halt. I could feel it fluttering against my throat. I wanted to spit it out but couldn’t. I gagged a few times but was forced to swallow. I hate bugs!

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  242. i wear glasses so everything is blurry when i go in to shower (since i take them off). and once i saw a black blotch, i just shrugged thinking it was like something else. then i felt squishhi feeling under my feet when i stepped on it. so i looked closely and saw bunch of leg-looking thing. I literally jumped out of the tub and screamed my heart out. my sister was sleeping and i woke her up. she thought a thief entered the house or something.

    I washed my foot like thousand times. i can never forget that feeling. now when i go into shower, i make sure first to see if there are spiders.

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  243. Living in an apartment makes you susceptible to alot of things, especially bugs. So by my neighbors next door to me having a roach infestation left me dealing with the little creatures too. I was in my kitchen one day and saw something black crawling around and quickly realized it was a roach, i grabbed a chair and proceed to kill it with my shoe. Well the thing was smart and missed my shoe and fell on me, i jumped down and started to scream while shaking my head yelling get off of me get off of me, but then i looked down and saw it by my foot. But this time he was not so lucky, i killed him quickly,.

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  244. #Raid bugstory
    thank got this is a random draw cause my bug story is rather pitiful. ok..i do live in Minnesota..i could probably go on and on about the mesquitoes that could eat you to the bone within 7 minutes on a summer night.
    anyway..here is my bug story..
    i bought cocoa bean muclh for my yard. oh the joys of having a back yard that smells of chocolate..how can that not be good? I placed all the cocoa bean mulch behind my house in the dirt that surrournds all my pretty flowers. beautiful! then i noticed the cocoa mulch was moving? turned out it was FULL of pincher bugs. now i had never seen pincher bugs in my life? are they even native of Minnesota? then i googled them and read how people belive they can get in your ear? and that is why they are also called ear wigs? WTF?? pincher bugs started showing up in the house too….i had to remove all the mulch and spray raid bug spary for weeks iniside and out until the infestaion was about gone. hate to say it i still see a pincher bug now and then…

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  245. ugh! I can’t read the comments and just reading your story was YUCK!

    I was around 12 years old and getting ready for school in the morning. I put my shoes on and was about to head out the door when my foot just didn’t feel right in my shoe. It felt like something was in my shoe. I took it off and out came the uglies, largest black spider I’d ever seen. I screamed, smashed the thing with my shoe and proceeded to do the creeped out GETTHATSPIDERAWAYFROMEITTOUCHEDME dance.

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  247. House we rented in Belen NM had cockroaches. The whole town was infested. It was gross and terrfying! I hate big bugs with shells.

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  248. I had started a new job recently at the time. It was in a kitchen at a college. I was working the grill. It was hot back there and I began to get very thirsty. So, I went and got a cup of fountain pop, Pepsi it was. I’m taking orders, grilling up students food. I turn around take a drink and, um…Oh MY GOD, NO – what’s in my mouth. Low & behold, I spit out a dead cockroach…The HORROR!! I was mortified. I am surprised I didn’t puke right on the grill. People still give me crap because I inspect every cup I use & I only drink clear/yellow pop so that I can see what’s in there. I know it’s a short story – but it was GROSS and I still have anxiety over that dang cockroach. BLECH!!! Ew, Ew, Ew!!

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  249. I literally lost my voice while screaming my head off because I found a millipede in our bathroom. It was about three inches long and doing “the worm” to run away. I sprayed A LOT of bug spray on it, needless to say. ICK!

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  250. We were staying at a condo in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I got out of the shower one morning to find a GIANT spider on my towel next to my hand as I was grabbing it off the towel rack!! I screamed so loud that the neighbors knocked on our door with phone in hand ready to call 911. So embarrassing!! lol

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  251. When my mom was a child she was eating fig newtons and noticed a strange flavor. She looked down and they were covered in little tiny red spiders. Gross!
    Haven’t looked at newtons the same.

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  252. When I was in the Navy (remember this was almost 50 years ago, and the buildings were not as hermetically sealed as they mostly are now) I was working nights in the newborn nursery and one of my friends was in the Preemie area when I heard a blood-curdling scream. I, of course, couldn’t leave my area, but I heard running footsteps of the corpsmen who were on duty and then a loud WHACK through the wall. One of the guys came in, laughing to himself, to let me know what had happened. Apparently an extremely large beetle of some sort had gotten in and was crawling across the floor and my friend was scared out of her wits by it. I am not certain what the corpsman used to kill the bug, but I do know it was large enough to make a noise I could hear in the other room. The bug had gotten nowhere near the isolettes with the babies, but the next day, there was definitely one of the periodic ‘bug-a-cide’ missions that were fairly common in those old buildings!

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  253. It was the summer I was 15. My best friends family had a trailer they shared with another family in Lake Havasu Arizona and we going to have a long, fun-filled weekend there. The place was packed with both families and their kids and friends. My friend and I got ip one morning and decided to make hot cocoa for breakfast–there were some packets left over from her last visit. Keep in mind, this was a weekend retreat and only used a few times each year.
    We heated some water in a tea pot on the stove and poured into our cups of powdered hot chocolate. When we stired the powder into the water, we noticed something strange but didn’t think much of it, so my friend decided to have her younger sister taste the cocoa first. After she drank the cocoa, she said “why did you put coconut in the cocoa?” Yeah, you know the answer–we didn’t put coconut in it-those were bugs floating in cocoa! Needless to say, my friends sister was horrified at being the unwitting taste tester and ingesting bugs! It still creeps me out!

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  254. I was never gave bugs much thought… that is until I moved to Houston, Tx from the Pacific Northwest. You see, in Seattle, we don’t have much of a bug problem. Sure, we’ve got spiders, ants- basically your run of the mill every day bugs but they typically didn’t bother me and I left them alone as well. That all changed the day I moved to Houston. They say everything is bigger in Texas. What they don’t tell you is that everything is bigger, there’s more of them, some you’ve never seen before nor ever wanted to see and some that have wings that I swear are the size of a small bird! Sure, I heard that these types of things existed but until I first moved into a rental house in Houston, I never truly got the pleasure (note saracasm) to experience it myself. I knew from day 1 I had a battle on my hands. Turns out that extermination is not “standard” in rentals down there (nor did I know to ask). Day 1, my cat, dog and I met our match with fleas. These were not your standard run of the mill fleas. I swear these things came marching out of the wood floors, walls, ceiling- etc.- you name it, they came out in full force to attack. Multiple flea treatments later for my cat and dog, permanent scarring for me on my legs and three trips from the exterminator, the fleas were gone, but only to be replaced by German roaches.

    I had never heard of a German roach nor had I ever seen a German roach… and if I ever see one again, you might actually have to send me to a roach treatment center- I’m sure those exist somewhere. I learned in my short time in the great city of Houston that German roaches will actually hitch a ride with you from the grocery store to your house. And once they do that, it’s war. Those nasty little critters were everywhere- this time it took another three trips from the exterminator, the removal of all of my dishes from my cabinets, the tossing of every spice, flour, sugars, etc- basically anything edible that wasn’t in the refrigerator had to be tossed. I actually just tried to throw out the entire kitchen but that didn’t work. Those little suckers taunted me- I’d open up a cabinet and I swear they’d stick their tongues out a me chanting “hahahaha, you can’t get me!”. I finally prevailed, but not before I was scarred for life- to this day, and it’s been 7 years now, I can’t open up a cabinet without expecting one of those things to jump out at me and say “haha- I told you that you can’t get me! I’m #winning!!”.

    Needless to say, I’ve very happily relocated back to the Pacific Northwest where the bugs and I once again live in harmony.

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  255. One ground nesting wasp and a fractured foot later. The story began last August while my 59 year old mother was caring for the backyard. While cleaning the pool and watering the flowers and the garden she met her match. A very large ground nesting wasp – 2 inches long. Yikes! Of course at the time my mom thought it was just a gigantic bee that she said was chasing after her. lol. One look at this creature and my mom went running for the stairs. When she got there she missed a step, tripped, and fractured the top of her foot. Ouch! That’s gotta hurt. The fear that harmless bug put into her put her out of commission for 3 months. And to top it all off, 3 weeks after the bug chasing human incident, my mom fell while using her crutches and fractured her wrist. Talk about double the trouble. Till this day we all, including my mom, still laugh about what that bug did to her. I can still picture what it must have looked like with her running to the stairs. lol. Thanks mom, you know I love you, but you just have to be careful around bugs. A little tidbit about ground nesting wasps. They have no interest in stinging. They actual are more of an annoyance than anything because they lay their eggs in the ground which can damage your lawn. The ground nesting wasp is also referred to as the Cicada Killers. NOw that’s a plus. ROFL

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  256. A long time ago, when I had a young body, I was at the check out line at KMart. It was late spring, I was wearing a halter top and shorts. When I was trying to pay the cashier, a bee flew into my top, and stung me, With the entire store watching, I was shreiking, exposing everything, trying to get rid of that bee. My husband was with me. He was laughing so hard he almost fell over. After I got myself all covered up, I paid the bill. The cashier never said a word. I have not been back to Kmart

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  257. I remember that in the senior high school my colleagues and I decided to spend our summer holiday in a seaside camp. After traveling for 6 hours by train, we eventually got there and were anxious to just lie down and rest. Our sleep was not to be peaceful, though. We realized our beds were heavily infested with fleas. We got up and started shaking the matresses and cleaning the rooms. That’s how we spent our first night and the following day there: trying to get rid of the pesky insects. That was a creepy start to our summer fun adventure!

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  259. I was home from college and my bedroom was in the basement. I was trying to fall asleep but there was a very large mosquito that was buzzing around me, and I dove under the covers hoping it would go away, but it kept dive bombing me. I finally lost it and bolted out of the room, and on the way up the stairs I saw a several boxelder bugs, (which hastened my trip up to the main floor). I finally reached the kitchen, and turned on the light to see a black fuzzy object on the floor. It was a spider the size of a quarter, and I just about fainted. My dad came down from his room and found in the fetal position on the floor…

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  260. As a little girl, I was always catching dragonflies and butterflies but when I was 7 I stepped on a bee who stung me on the bottom of my foot! Since then my deep rooted bug fear has taken hold of me. From jumping spiders in the corners of my garage to creepy crawly worms after a Spring rain–I loathe them all! Except, of course, lady bugs–the cutest little bugs around!

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  261. Several years ago when my x husband and i had moved to another wown for his job. A family was moving into the house adjoining my yard. we quickly became friends as neither of us knew anyone in that town……few days later she began telling me she had found thousands of roaches in her home……mostly when she would be gone ,then come home and flip the lights on….It was hard for me to believe that there were sooooo many roaches….so one nite when she came home..,.before going int, she came and got me to come look.. When she flipped the light on…..I have never in my life seen such a large amount of bugs in one room! Needless to say…..i wasted NO time getting out of there.

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  264. My family and i stayed in a cabin in marathon key, florida. I woke up early to see little bugs called no see ums crawling on the set of toothbrushes in the bathroom. Obviously these little pests were not living up to their name. i got creeped out and as i went to gather them to toss them out YUK!!!!!!!!!!! AND… in the sink basin was a Scorpion.! We left our toothbrushes and soon left the cabin for more adventures in the other florida keys. I was never so started and scared!

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  265. My “funny bug story” is more of an ongoing “funny bug SITUATION”.

    I HATE cockroaches. I am not super squeamish in general, but for some reason those big monsters just give me the creeps. But we get them in the house from time to time, in spite of the exterminator – and usually the cats will bat them around for a while, then bring them, that’s right, into my bedroom! ACK!

    When I see them sitting there on the floor (dead or alive) I scream. I can’t help it. I feel stupid, but I scream.

    My teenage son or husband will usually come and gather up the offending insect and dispose of it.

    But I started feeling really dumb when my FIVE YEAR OLD DAUGHTER was the one who came to my rescue one day!! LOL!!

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  266. We have box elder bugs all over our yard, deck, and house (inside and out). They reproduce like crazy and are everywhere. My 11-year-old son saw two of them “mating” a while back and asked if they were “doing it” because they were humping each other and he thought it was gross!

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  267. We had recently moved to a different part of the state and our new house had a wood stove. We’d brought a few pieces of wood into the house and stacked them by the stove. Later on I was on the phone with my Mother-in-law and sat down on the couch to chat, when I saw a spider crawling up my shoulder. I screamed and flicked it off of me, then whacked it with a newspaper. The spider turned out to be a black widow, which is a common find in that area, but we’d never seen them where we lived before. I learned a lesson to always sweep off the wood before bringing it into the house.

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  268. Here’s mine: Last year mid-summer, we moved to our new house with the nice, new covered front porch. My 13 year old daughter & i decided to sweep down all the cobwebs from the porch and in doing so, we realized that we had *hundreds* of spiders living out there! many of them had babies – oh it was just awful! Imagine me with broom in hand trying to sweep them down and screaming every single time I saw one go running – it was terrible – my daughter, being the tomboy she is, loved every minute of it!

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  269. My mom often tells this story about when her and my dad were living in Texas. She was pregnant with my oldest sister and had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom. She thought she would be kind enough to my dad and leave the lights off so as not to wake him. She swings her legs over the edge of the bed and the next thing she hears is a loud crunch and feels bugs all around her bare feet. She screamed and quickly turned the light on only to find several cockroaches scattering and a couple of dead ones stuck to her feet. From that day until they moved out of Texas, she turned the lights on and maked sure the little buggers had scattered before stepping out of bed. So much for trying to be nice to my dad!

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  270. My daughter is very afraid of spiders… not matter what the size…. she was sitting on the floor watching TV when I garden spider crawled right beside her… she saw it out of the corner of her eye and jumped straight up off the floor over the coffee table and on to the sofa…. She stayed there until her twin sister killed it… 🙂 it was funny to us but not to her… 🙂

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  271. In New Zealand they have a giant of a bug called a Wetta, I had been told it was a “large cricket” well I worked in a glass house (the kiwi version of a flower farm) for the year I lived there and I did not know that these lovely beasties LOVED the carnations I was paid to pick. The rest of the staff, all being harty Kiwi’s waited and stayed close to me, untill I met one face to face – I pulled out my arm from picking a stem and the fellow was on my sleave, being a 19 year old girl I screamed and screamed, jumped and them ran to try and get this small dog sized “cricket” off of me – nothing worked – all the while my co-workers, who where all my boyfriends family by the way, we killing themselfs laughing. Not one person game to my aide, unitll I was almost crying, a good 15 minutes later, poor Wetta, must have been scared to death of this Canadian girl as well LOL. My boyfriends brother finally came over and callmly disintangled his hooks from my sleeve. I was SO embarresed when they pointed out that they do not have a single animal in NZ that could kill a person, not one snake, bear or wolf (I had grown up in Northern BC) I was teased about this Wetta for the entire year I lived there! They would bring them to me after that, point them out – just to torment me. I still dislike them, ugh, crickets are ment to be lizzard food, not big enofe to eat a lizzard!

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  272. Hey girls! My story is similar. Except it was in MY house!
    We were new to the Gulf Coast area and didn’t realize that the big cockroaches come inside when the rains hit. Well, not only do they come in and crawl around. They also FLY! The most awfulness of it all was that in effort to collect them they would panic and fly and land on people. <>

    It was very crazy and something I *NEVER* want to live through again!

    Christa

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  273. I am absoultely terrified of wasps. When they get in the house, I simply don’t think. About 11 years ago, just after we moved into our home, my oldest daughter and I were sitting at the kitchen table having tea around 10 in the morning. I started to hear a buzz. Faint at first but getting louder. We atarted looking around to see what it was and where it was. (the windows were open, so could of been outside. In the living, at the large picture window, was a queen! Getting angrier by the second. I didn’t even hesitat. I went outside. Never even thought of my daughter! I stood as close to the road and as far away as possible from my house staring at the window. Soon, 1 or 2 or 5 minutes later my daughter came out. I asked her where she’d been and she told me she went upstairs to get dressed before coming outside. I somply couldn’t move and told her to run to the neighbors (who we’d met the week before ) and see if they would help get the wasp. My neighbor and her husband came outside. She stood talking to me while her husband went in and killed the wasp. After it was disposed of, my neighbor casually leaned over and said the little shorty nightgown I was wearing was a heck of a way to introduce myself to the neighborhood. I looked down and nearly died of embarrassment!!! I didn’t stop to say thanks or anything and stayed in hiding for the next week afraid I’d see someone who saw me!

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  274. I moved to Texas when I was 22 years old. I had never seen a giant FLYING cockroach before then. They are like 3 inches long and indestructible! I lived in an apartment building and was home alone one night. I was watching TV and heard one flying around (I can still vividly remember the clicking sound of their wings). I grabbed a shoe and tried to find it. When you smash them they don’t die! I kept hearing them and realized there were 5 or 6 (or 100) lurking around. I was screaming my head off trying to kill them. They don’t smoosh and spraying them with hair spray doesn’t even phase them. I was in tears hysterically crying screaming freaking out trying to kill them or shoo them out the patio with a sheet.

    There was a knock at the door. It was the police. I guess one of my neighbors thought I was being murdered or beat up or something. The really nice officer came in and killed the roaches (police boots do smoosh them). I think he was also looking around a bit to see if I had some crazy boyfriend hiding that was beating me up. He wished me good night and called me Miss. He left his card in case I was in any sort of domestic danger.

    I didn’t sleep at all that night and within a few weeks I had to move back to Omaha to get away from those roaches. Still gives me chills thinking about those monster bugs but since then spiders don’t bother me one bit – they are easy to smoosh.

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  275. OMG!! I hate spiders…like moe than you can imagine. Would rather find a snake in my bed than a spider on my celing. Anyway…we moved to a rural area after living in the city my whole life. We found that there are NON AGGRESSIVE house spiders here…the size of a friggin ….oh I cant think of anything big enough!!! About the size of a chips ahoy choc chip cookie…..these suckers are HUGE….HUGE I TELL YOU!!!

    I got up one night in the middle of the night….only to find one on the BACK SIDE OF THE TP ROLL!!! Yes thats right…in the privy…I swear I screamed bloody murder…the hubby and son came running.

    And do you know WHAT they did with that thing? They put it in a canning jar and Hubby took it to work to show how COOL it was?!?!?!? OMG!! YECH

    Anywhay there it is…..super gross!!!

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  276. My husband’s family has an orchard, which both my husband and I have taken over. Steve (my hubby) and I were out picking apples on nice, warm fall day….and I was totally taken by the weather, and how beautiful and big the apples were! As I was picking, I reached up without looking, and almost grabbed a creeeeepy yellow and black spider….bigger than the size of a quarter!!! I SCREAMMMEEDDD , and I’m sure the neighbors half a mile down the road heard……it so gave me the heeby geebies!!!! YUCK!!! I REALLY don’t like spiders AT ALL!!!!!! 😉

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  277. I was 9+ months pregnant with my son and sitting in the recliner, enjoying a rest a couple of days before the scheduled trip to the hospital. Out of the corner of my eye, saw the biggest spider I’d ever seen outside of a tarantula in Texas (another story). Spider saw me and hid and thank goodness at that moment since I was 9+ months pregnant and not quickly moving those days. However, since Mr. Ginormous Spider of Death hid, husband and mother-in-law did not see him and thought I was cuckoo. Husband turned the chair sideways and upside down and finally Mr. Nasty Big Arachnid jumped out and sprinted. Husband finally disposed of said spider and proclaimed it a “wood spider.” I still call that the spider chair. Creepy!

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  279. Last year at this time I was big and pregnant and we had been seeing scorpions everywhere. One morning while getting ready for work I looked down on my big robed belly and there was a scorpion staring at me. I let out a blood curdling scream and woke my husband who thought I was in labor or something and about had a heart attack. We both just about peed our pants that morning.
    whitlav at gmail dot com

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  280. My grandad was a biologist and taught in our local high school so early on he educated me as to the difference between good bugs (bugs that do us a service) and bad bugs (mostly ones that carry diseases we are suceptable to) so I didn’t grow up with a fear of bugs but rather the knowledge of what ones to leave alone and what ones to squish. Spiders seem to be the most frightening to women but really spiders are friends to man as they keep bad bugs under control. Nothing a spider likes better than a nice fly or aphid. In my first apartment there was a fly problem in the large bathroom so I went into the yard and got a couple of garden spiders and relocated them in my bathroom and soon there wasn’t a fly in sight. Anyway I came to respect and use spiders where I needed them and then wrote a poem about them for a contest. I won the contest by the way and here is the poem.

    THE LITTLE ENGINEER – Shirley Hodge

    I saw a busy spider climbing up my bedroom wall
    she was so very tiny she was hardly there at all.

    Watching her I knew there was a purpose to it all
    she was looking for the perfect spot upon the bedroom wall

    Browsing here and turning there, no place seemed just right
    finally, I grew weary and turned off the ceiling light.

    Came dawn and I awoke to a room sunshine bright
    to discover that my spider had passed a busy night

    For there in the corner its strands as white as milk
    hung a lovely webish home made of spider silk.

    8

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  282. When we were first married, I was washing some sheets that my husband had- there were little speckles all over them so I asked him what it was. He said that the sheets were the ones he used on the mission he went on for our church to Brazil. There were so many mosquitoes that when he would roll over at night, he would squish a bunch which would leave little blood dots on his sheets – so gross!

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  285. Mine isn’t so much about me… my dad has a spider phobia so one year I snuck a picture of a camel spider in his birthday card – scared a few more years off!

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  286. I had a Close Encounter of the Bug Kind just this weekend! I was in my kitchen, minding my own business, when I saw a stray ant. I attempted to stay calm and swatted at him. Then I looked up and noticed that there were ants ALL OVER my wooden cabinets! That one little guy belonged to a whole ant army!

    Needless to say, my plans of being super lazy this weekend were ruined. Thanks, ants.

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  288. Oh my here’s the worst one. When I was around 7 years old, my brother always used to find ways to scare the heck out of me. Once we were sleeping and my brother would have seen a spider (really huge like the size of your hand), it was already dead so instead of throwing it away, he placed it on my pillow. IMAGINE, I was literally scared to death when I woke up next morning to discover a spider in my bed on my pillow. Since, then I have literally developed acrophobia.

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  289. I’ve always had a fear of spiders. I can handle most other gross things, but spiders make my skin crawl(even now having JUST typed it). So in high school, I was in bed, reading before going to sleep and a HUGE(or perhaps dime sized) spider crawled across my sheets. I went from being horizontal to being vertical and levitating in about .5 seconds. I screamed and my step-dad came in to save the day. Despite looking for 20 minutes, he could find no sign of the spider. I spent the next week sleeping on the couch and tip toe running and dancing into my room for clothes each morning. I just couldn’t make myself sleep in there. By the end of the week my mom had had enough and deep cleaned my room so that I would sleep in there again. I’m working on it now but one in my bed still equals game over.

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  290. They say we grow bugs large down here in FL! Well, they’re not kidding! When I came down to FL back in 1975, I had never seen a bug any larger than about 2 inches long. I was at my grandparents’ house, standing outside their carport, waiting for the family. I happened to look over on the house, and saw a ginormous multicolored–green, yellow, black—grasshopper! Oh boy, it was huge, and I’m talking about 5 to 6 inches long. I literally started screaming! My dad ended up killing it! Since then, I’ve seen huge spiders, but I usually kill them myself!

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  291. I was fine with most bugs until 2 years ago when my husband called me out to our yard and pointed out a golf ball sized spider hiding in the weeds. Yuck! Our kids had been out playing in there! I know it is just a common old spider, but I can only imagine it latching on and draining all the blood out of them, silly I know, but that thing was huge!

    Reply

  292. My son works for a pest control company. Last night, he called to say that while he was under a client’s house, spraying for bugs, something flew into his ear! He asked me what he should do as he had already tried ideas from the internet. How about going to the doctor?

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  293. It’s almost too horrifying to relive but I guess for the sake of sharing we can relive those memories.

    When we remodeled our home a few years ago it forced my family to use our half finished basement bathroom instead of the usually accommodating upstairs one. The ceiling tiles were not in place and the sink didn’t work, but at least it had a working shower. Although when you look up you see all the pipes and such due to the missing ceiling.

    I woke up early and was a bit foggy but managed to make my way down a hall, around my kitchen, down the basement stairs, through the laundry room and into the bathroom. I turn on a nice hot shower and jump right in anxiously awaiting the refreshing warm water and it’s caffeine like affects on my tired body.

    I proceed for the next few minutes to shower up and as I suds I notice something out of the corner of my eye, as if they knew I had just seen them two, not one… TWO giant silver fish fall from a tiny copper pipe onto my back. If you don’t know what a silver fish is I dare you to google image search it, you’ll be sorry you did. So not only one but two dirty golden creatures of the night fall onto me, I proceeded with the standard screaming and flailing until I am able to remove one, but where was the other? I ran out of the bathroom, up the stairs, through my kitchen, and into my bedroom to seek the assistance of my sleeping husband.

    I jump onto the bed screaming and begging for assistance, at this time I am so distraught that my rant comes out in Chinese, or what my husband must hear as Chinese because he just stares at me, blank, dead stare. I try to calm down enough to say “there’s a bug on me somewhere help me!”

    This is the point where he laughs but starts to check my naked dripping and by now goose pimple cover body for a giant cat sized bug with venomous pinchers and a nasty disposition. He checks me over then out of nowhere gasps and then smacks me in the back of the head hard enough to knock me over and to the floor.

    Spousal abuse isn’t really his style so while I gather myself I ask, “Did you get it?”. Turns out he had and as I checked out the damage in the mirror in our bedroom I have to laugh as I see a squished buggy remain of the silver fish on the side of my head and the same on my back from the one I squished. The worst part is I had to go get back into the shower to wash off the war wounds and crusty bug parts from my back and head and the entire time all I can do is stare at the ceiling to satisfy my paranoia.

    Needless to say the ceiling was replaced later that week, but I still to this day freak out a little every time I get in the shower.

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  294. stopping to read some of others’ bug stories. posted my story the otherday. good luck to all who posted. and good luck with those bugs! 😉

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  295. When I was growing up our family lived in a small town . In the lot next to our home was the city water tower. Well at my age I had no idea what a water bug was. Until one night I when I had gotten up to go to the bathroom. I turn on the light and there are BIG ugly bugs in the sink and bath tub. Needless to say I did not sleep the rest of that night. As my family struggled with the city over the problem. Our home became infested with them. They were every where! I found them in my bed on may occasions. I started stuffing the covers in around my body tightly. All the while my pillow and head were under the blankest as well. Firmly tucked in. I slept like this for years, even after we finally moved. I never ever got up to use the restroom in the night again. I still sleep with a blanket on me no matter what the temperature is. Now I’m going to have the hee-vy gee-vies the rest of the day!

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  296. I was sitting in our basement one summer evening with my husband. I picked up my pop can, took a sip and felt a stinging feeling on the tip of my tongue. I tried to swipe the object off of my tongue, but it didn’t work. I panicked and pulled and off came an earwig. I’m a lot more careful about where I set my drink and take a better look before I take a sip now!

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  297. We just recently moved from Florida to Tennessee and while there Fire Ants were a HUGE concern, especially since I have severe allergies and even one bite was bad and when you deal with fireants, the bites can be in the hundreds almost simultaneously, which would have been very very bad for me…so of course while living down there I have thoughly frightened our 4yo daughter,especially since we found a nest of them under(and in) her bed one night and I panicked and made us check every nook and cranny over and over for more….
    Now that we live in Tennessee, Sugar ants are the issue, they are everywhere..it doesnt matter how hard I try to get every speck of food, seal every container, etc, they still are everywhere..now I know they are sugar not fire ants but the 4yo doesnt, so you can imagine the ear piercing screams that happen hourly..ive ALMOST gotten used to the sound as it is a completely different scream then no-ant ones..lol..so a few days ago she screams again, me “(insert daughters name), its just an ant”, she continues screaming and is now crying, I take my time getting there, and when I do, I panic but try not to freak her out, It was the biggest spider Ive ever seen! LESS THAN 3 feet from her face! As calmly as I can, I move her away(not looking away from the spider of course) and reach for the closest thing I can find that I think is suitible to kill it without risk of it getting me, well, nothing seemed too enought so the next best thing was a big glass jug that I covered it with and then placed a massive stack of books on to wait for my hubby to comehome and kill…and then promptly packed up the girls and left the house because it was all I could think about! Ugh..makes me shiver even now….

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  298. When we were in our old house we started getting those big black ants everywhere in the kitchen area. I tried everything to get rid of them. We would even see them climbing up the walls. The REALLY creepy part for me was when they just started appearing in the dishwasher! I had never heard of ants getting in there and that freaked me out! I then got a little more motivated and the ants were gone for good a week later:p

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  300. the only story i can really think of is when i was about 16 i was sleeping in bed and my grandma was out at bingo so i was home alone and i got startled awake becasue i felt something on my shoulder and i was soooooo scared i did not want to turn around but i ever so slowly turned my head and there was a huge roach on my pillow i scream and jumped up and sat on the recliner for about an hour i swear i thought i was going to have a heart attack!!

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  301. Creepy is the first year we received the green bins to put our food scraps and so on outside. Is the warm weather came and opening the green bin and seeing maggots all over it. Hearing me freak out was not good. I am sure neighbours heard too. I still can’t stand opening it in the warmer weather. Hearing me screach still happens.

    silverneon2000 at yahoo dot com

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  302. My daughter really loves bugs, including worms. After it rained heavily one night my husband was getting ready to go to work. He walked out of the garage and saw over 20 worms laying on our driveway so he thought my daughter would like to see them. She runs outside to look at them and then when my husband wants to pull out of the driveway she yells WAIT!!! She picked up every one of those worms and carried to them to safety so Daddy wouldn’t run them over with his care. She is one special girl!!

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  304. It was Halloween, and being a fun-loving person, I went to a local party store and bought some giant rubber bugs and gave them to my coworkers. The newest girl in the office thanked me, then went on to explain that she once had a bug phobia but had gone through therapy and was okay now. She was speaking a little too brightly and quickly, and I knew she was completely freaked out. A few days later, she confessed that she’d started building a fortress of pillows in her bed at night in case a bug tried to get in. I STILL feel awful about causing her angst. Bugs are terrible any way you look at it… even rubber bugs!

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  305. My mom was not big on spanking her little ones. When I was 4 years old, we were visiting my Grandma in Mississippi and mom was getting me ready for church. I kept squirming. She kept telling me to be still and I just kept squirming. She swatted me on my butt and still I wasn’t still. She lifted my dress to fix the lining and there was a little roach crawling up my leg. After she got it off of me, she felt SO bad for spanking me. I am in my 40’s and that story still comes up every now and then. 🙂

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  306. I am terrible with bugs…pretty much don’t like any! Anyways, when I was about 12 years old, i was taking a bath and all of a sudden I noticed a black spider about the size of a quarter in the tub with me…floating/swimming in the water. I screamed and ran down the hallway to my room to hide, never bothering to put clothes or a towel on. I couldn’t get to my room fast enough! My Mom was pretty worried when she heard me screaming and came to see what was wrong. I don’t think she was all that impressed to find out that all that fuss was over a little spider.

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  307. My story isn’t as long as most but it is true none the less!
    One time when we went camping as little kids we were all sleeping in our family tent and of course us kids could not sleep. My brother noticed that there was a spider on my moms chin. We did not k ow what to do as it was crawling towards her mouth and we also did not want to wake her up and get in trouble.
    I noticed that there was a glass of water sitting in the cooler my mom was using as a nightstand and as we were getting desperate we thought maybe if we knocked the glass of water off we could lay down and fake sleep and the water would fall on her and wake her up. My brother tripped trying to get over there, knocked the water off on my dad who sat up so quickly he backhanded my mother on his way up and she snapped her mouth closed on the spider and swallowed it. My mom was mad at my dad all weekend for smacking her and us for not waking her up lol. Can’t win for losing!!

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  309. My bug story is happened about 5 years ago. I was travelling with my sweetheart and we stayed at a hotel in Kitchener ( won’t say where). It was very late and we were tired. I went to the bathroom. My bladder was so full. As I was relieving myself, I noticed ants around my feet. Holy man. This was a well known hotel. Well, when I stood up, there were more ants behind the toilet and in the bathtub. Oh, big yucks. We called the front desk and had our room changed. I didn’t see anything in that room.
    I decided to take a hot bath. I was so relaxed and then noticed ants along the edge of the wall. I guess they wanted to say “welcome”. 🙂 Well, I thought I would just relax and continue my bath and then, I saw some on the edge of the bathtub. That was the end of my bath. Yap.

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  310. My mom likes to tell me about the first time I got stung by a bee. I was 2, and we were playing outside in the yard. I saw a big fat bumble bee on a flower, and grabbed for it while yelling, “Pretty!” and it stung me right on my palm. Then I started crying, “No pretty, no pretty!” I ended up squishing the bee, so I got my revenge.

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  311. My story involves some bugs and hornets in a port-a-potty. I was out walking with a friend and when we were done I had to go and a nearby port-a-potty was the closest. I went in, did the air chair and noticed small bugs around the upper part of the port-a-potty and a HUGE hornet’s nest in the corner. I freaked out. I didn’t want to run out of the bathroom with my pants down in front of my friend so I’m trying frantically to get my pants pulled up all while the whole port-a-potty was shaking (what must my friend have thought!). I thought for sure I’d get stung but thankfully I made it outside without any incident and my pants mostly pulled up. It was crazy but I’m glad I didn’t get stung and no little bugs fell on me!

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  312. My dad travels a lot with his job. He was staying in a hotel one night and decided to stay in and order a pizza. He got into his PJs, turned out all the lights, and brought his delivered pizza over to the recliner and watched some T.V. while he ate. He eventually got full and dozed off in the recliner for a couple of hours, T.V. still on, and pizza box with half a pizza left in the box. When he woke up, he decided to polish off the rest of that pizza. So, he reached down and grabbed a piece and took a big bite. As he was eating, he felt some “crumbs” on his face, so he wiped his cheek off. A few seconds later, he felt more “crumbs” and it felt like they were crawling on him. He became suspicious, so he reached over and turned on the light. To his dismay, he looked down at the pizza box and saw that it was COVERED in small little ants. Literally, the pizza was BLACK because there were so many. He was pretty grossed out when he realized he had just eaten almost a whole piece of pizza that was covered in these ants!!

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  313. I don’t like bugs! Actually, I think I can say with 100% certainty – I hate bugs! One very late night, my daughter came to my bed and asked for a drink of water. Being the good mother, I sleepily got up from my bed and headed to the kitchen. As I turned on the light, some sort of bug ran across my path. I jumped and screamed…and then proceeded to miss the last couple of steps on the stairs. Yes, I fell down – flat on my face. I managed to get up, get the water, and hobble my way to my daughter’s room. She was fast asleep, of course. I managed to fall back asleep, but when I woke up in the morning…I was in so much pain that I headed straight to my doctor’s office and found out that I had severely sprained my ankle. Just one more reason that I hate bugs!

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  314. I have done quite a bit of travelling and when I was younger the travelling involved staying in less than adequate hotel rooms and the like. At this stage of my life I was in my early 20s and happened to find myself in a hotel in the Victoria area of London, England. I had met a couple of backpackers who had said the hotel was decent for its price and I took their recommendation on board and booked it for a couple of weeks until I found my feet.

    It was late November/early December at the time so the room was quite warm in comparison to outside and quite comfortable. The first night I fell asleep no problem as sightseeing can take it out of you and I woke up to hear all kinds of noises in the room. As I was by myself in the room I was quite taken aback and was not sure what was causing this strange sound.

    I ran for the light and quickly turned it on only to find that about 20 cockroaches had crawled out of the floorboards or wherever they were living and were crawling on the walls. First I was shocked and then disgusted. I am not a fan of one cockroach let alone cockroaches in double figures so the sight made my skin crawl.

    As it was early morning – I endeavoured to put my head back under the blankets and tried to go back to sleep – with the light on! Needless to say I checked out of the hotel the next day.

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  315. My 10 year old daughter is terrified of bugs, but when we proposed moving her to a bedroom in the basement so she would no longer have to share a room with her little brother, she jumped at the chance – even at the risk of having to deal with bugs. She has been fine with a basement bedroom for a couple of years now. And there are perks too. She always keeps her room clean because I told her that bugs like to hide in warm places so anything left on the floor could be a nice home for them. Also, she has to really clean her room each spring so my husband can do a complete bug spray of her room. 🙂

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  316. I clean a vacation home here in Missouri for a lady that lives in the city.(little farm home in the country) One day I was cleaning the shower and pulled up the plug from the drain. Out came this ALIEN creature! Some sort of ginormous centepede looking thing. Legs everywhere, anntenae…I swear to you I screamed like a little girl…and I’m the type of woman that can run a chainsaw…yeah, I’m still scared of that drain.

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  317. When I was in college, I shared a room with two other girls, both of whom were not from Florida and had never seen a palmetto bug. For those who do not know what these are, they are huge (and I mean like Oreo cookie size) and fly. We had only been in our room about a week and had discovered ants in our bathroom and had been killing them with Raid. One morning I was awoken at o’dark thirty by my screaming roommate Tabitha. She had been getting into the shower and it had jumped out at her. My other roommate and I rushed into the bathroom and she was on the counter, half dressed and completely freaking out. Being the braver roomie, my other roommate Tracey, grabbed the can of Raid but it was empty. By this time, the bug and flown out of the bathroom and was crawling on the door jam in our room. Panicked that it would soon take cover in our closets, I grabbed a can of Rave hairspray and started spraying it at the palmetto bug. The bug was still “running” but I kept spraying him with the hairspray. Within about a minute, the hairspray started to set and the bug became stuck until he could no longer move. Tracey sprang into action, grabbed a chair and smacked the bug with Tabitha’s sandal. She then picked him with a paper plate and carried him out into the hallway and dumped him in the garbage can at the other end of the floor. After that, we always had 3 or 4 cans of Rave hairspray around to deal with the bugs/ants. To this day, I still use Rave hairspray and keep 2 or 3 bottles on hand in the bathroom and in the kitchen to battle ants and the unfortunate palmetto bugs that stray into our home from time to time. It’s safer for the kids to use as well and my younger son, Matt is the resident bug killer. The moral of the story? Thank goodness for the 80’s and all our poofy hair and hairspray needs because when we were desperate, the hairspray worked and our whole floor of girls became hairspray exterminators. 🙂

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  318. I am so terrified of spiders it’s nearly debilitating, particularly living in the south where they are quite abundant. Unfortunately, my son has inherited this phobia and will often swear there are spiders crawling on him (in bed, at school, in the shower and in the car, especially) even though none are ever found. One night (of many) while driving home my son was in the back seat and began screaming that a spider was on him. He thrashed around and screeched to the point that I nearly wrecked. As soon as it was safe, I pulled over and got out of the car and searched around to see if I could find anything (better safe than sorry, right?). As usual, nothing turned up, so I was sure, once again, that he had imagined it.

    The next morning, as I am leaving for work, I toss my briefcase behind the driver’s seat and hop in the car. As I lean slightly to the right to start the ignition I catch something glittery out of the corner of my eye and turn to see a GIANT web (barely an inch – okay a foot – from my face!!!) extending from the passenger seat across most of the back of the car, in the middle of which is the creepiest, hairiest, shudder-inducing-est spider I have ever seen!! Later research determined it to be a wolf spider, which makes sense. It was as scary as any wolf I can imagine. Roughly quarter-sized, this spider elicited a sound that surely made my neighbors’ hair stand up on the backs of their necks, which would have perfectly imitated mine. Needless to say, I was out of that car so fast someone could have drafted off my backside.

    Late for work already, I began pacing as I considered my options. 1) Donate my car to charity and never have to deal with the aforementioned spider. Work would surely understand my indefinite absence, right? Hmm. Probably not. And new cars are expensive. 2) Call for Mr. WinneratLife to leave work and come home to handle spider disposal duty on my behalf (as usual). This would have been perfect if I’d thought he would agree. And not think I was crazy. 3) Atttempt spider removal on my own [shudder, shudder, shudder]. THIS was not a pleasant thought, but I quickly and sadly realized it was my only real option. HOW I was going to dispose of the spider then became the next big dilemma. No way was I putting my bare hand anywhere near this thing.

    I decided that gloves were in order and that a shoe was the only thing I could allow to come in contact with the spider so off it came for squishing duty [SHUDDER]. With no intention of getting into the car to deal with this, I roll down all of the windows and stand as far away as possible as I reach in the car (with only one eye open) to swipe at said abominable spider. In hindsight, the RAID house and garden bug killer that is always on hand would have been a better solution. Alas, with danger so imminent, I was NOT thinking clearly. The spider quickly began to run up the web and away from my attempts to end its life. At this point I am panicked and yelping wildly as my teenaged daughter comes out of the house to leave for school. She immediately erupts into peals of laughter as I dance around the driveway screeching and shuddering like I have lost my mind. She then calmly takes the shoe from me, removes one of her own and, placing one shoe in front and one shoe behind the web, deftly squishes the spider then pulls the spider and web free from the car. MY HERO!!! Who would have thought a daughter of mine could be so brave and fearless!! Of course, I still wasn’t happy to have to get into the car after having a HUMONGOUS spider in there for so long. Sadly, Mr. W.A.L. would not agree to trade in the car based solely on my spider encounter. Thankfully, weekly RAID treatments keep the spiders (and my shuddering) to a minimum these days and go a long way toward giving me spider peace of mind.

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  319. When in high school I woke up with a swollen eye… you could see where something (a spider) had bitten me. I went to the doctor because the whole left side of my face was swelling and bruising! While examining me the doctor asked if I had a boyfriend… (my first thought was ewe are you seriously hitting on me right now)! I answered… “yes. why?” Then the doctor asked me if he had hit me??!!?? I started to laugh pretty much out of relief but also because at the time my boyfriend lived 3 hours away! I still have to chuckle at myself for thinking that the doctor was about to “hit” on me!!

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  320. When I was 15 I went to camp and part of the session was a 7 day backpacking trip. We didn’t bother with tents, it was summer and we all camped under the stars, laying our sleeping bags on our tarps. One night we camped under a bunch of trees, and in the morning there were literally 100’s of maggots crawling around on our tarps. We think they fell out of the trees during the night. It was the most disgusting thing I ever saw, to wake up amid maggots crawling all around me.

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  323. When I was in middle school a couple of my friends and I were playing on the back porch. We were enjoying a nice game of air hockey! We didnt have our shoes on because we were on the porch and my best friend all of a sudden felt something wet and squishy under her foot. When she lifted her foot, there was a huge slug!!! I was traumatized from that and I never ever go outside with bare feet!!

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  324. Posted to my FB and my FB name is Tawna Crawford Richard. You can friend me (I will accept) to see it! Posted at 9:52 amEST on Monday May 2nd!

    Tawna
    tawna6988 AT gmail DOT com

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  325. At the age of 10 I had my worst nightmare take place. The family was sitting outside on the farm by the house and enjoying a beautiful day. I was on my sister’s tricycle and just moving within a small distance. Out of the blue I look down and there is a caterpillar on my foot. Well I screamed and upon finding out what it was my family told me to keep it quiet. Easy for them to say. I jumped around and danced and finally someone knocked it off. My younger sister loves bug and picked it up. The same, oh he’s so soft. I didn’t care what he was but he had been crawling on my foot. Never again did I wear those lovely gold slippers with a little heel that I loved. How could I, a caterpillar had crawled on them.

    To this day I have a tingly, crawling nervous reaction at all crawling insects and flying ones.

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  326. Last week, I was getting ready for bed and I kept hearing a buzzing sound. It sounded really close to my head but I couldn’t find anything so I finally fell asleep. The next morning when I woke up the inside of my ear was itching. I stuck my pinky finger in to scratch it and when I took it out there was a tiny dead winged insect. Yuck!!!

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  327. Being a New Yorker, I always thought “Lovebugs” were just a cute term of endearment that developed over time… UNTIL this week. We spent the week in Orlando with our family and it is LOVE BUG SEASON!

    In the pool with our kids on Easter Sunday, my mother-in-law was resting on one of the chaise lounges at our hotel. The funniest thing was seeing her swat the HUNDREDS of lovebugs with her flip flop. Cursing, screaming and swatting, the lovebugs were ALL OVER her.

    I have to say I have a good relationship with my mother-in-law, so when we got out of the pool we helped her!

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  331. I live in Florida where we have lots of very large and creepy bugs. On occasion, one of these gigantic creepy crawlies comes into our house. One particularly memorable creepy bug incident happened to me on a Saturday night when I was home with my three kids. I was in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner. I happened to look up at the plant shelf that seperates our kitchen and dining room. To my shock and horror, there above me was a very large brown roach. I ran to get my broom, in an attempt to quickly smash the unwanted visitor. As I reached back to smack the roach, it took off and flew across my kitchen. I ran across the room to smash the pest on the other side of the room. This time, I swung the broom so hard that I did hit the roach, but I also sent myself falling backward. As I landed firmly on my backside, the roach fell to the floor and started running toward me. I picked up the broom (from a seated position) and hit the roach two or three more times, until it met its demise. All the while, my kids were watching my duel with the roach and laughing their heads off. It must have been quite a sight.

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  333. I was a camp counselor during my college summers. Our camp drew lots of international campers, particularly from Mexico. Because they had to fly into Chicago, then take a 90 minute bus ride, the Mexican campers often arrived in the middle of the night. One of my campers, a brand new 9 y/o, arrived alone. As we quickly made a bed for the sleepy little girl, she spied one of the ever-present palmetto bugs scurry across the cabin floor. Her screams of “la cucaracha! la cucaracha!” woke several other girls. Quite the welcome!

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  335. I live in Texas where everything is bigger – including the bugs. I was taking a shower one morning, half asleep, rubbing shampoo into my hair when a giant water (tree) roach crawled up out of the drain! I could swear I heard the music from the shower scene in “Psycho” as I shrieked, grabbed the bottle of shampoo and repeatedly smashed the roach. It was weeks before I could take a shower without keeping my eyes on the drain.

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  336. When I was a little girl I was at the beauty salon for a haircut and the stylist found a tick in on my head. It was removed but I felt creepy afterwards. A few weeks later I thought that another tick was on my head and I took the scissors and cut a large section of my hair off. No tick but a good spanking resulted!

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  338. When I was young, our apartment was full of bugs. Roaches in dresser drawers, on the ceiling, in the pantry. My mother once showed me two bugs fighting between the lettuce leaves as she was making baloney sandwiches for lunch. The worst incident happened as I was lying in bed, and I saw a huge, black bug trudging down the middle of the hallway. It was so big it actually cast a shadow on the wall (no, really!). Then I saw it stop, turn its little head and look straight at me! My little feet didn’t touch the floor for days!

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  339. I will never forget this creepy encounter with cockroaches. I was about 9 or 10. I had gone to bed then something woke me up. I heard fluttering noises like something was flying around my bedroom. I was so creeped out and frightenend I knocked over my lamp and broke it. I was so afraid to get out of bed because it was dark and the fluttering insects, I assumed, kept flying around me and a couple of times hitting me. I was so grossed out! So there I was in the dark flailing my arms about, trying not to wake anyone up because earlier I had gotten into big trouble and my parents didn’t want to hear a peep out of me for the rest of the evening. So as quietly as I could with the insects still flying around me, I rushed over to the hallway outside my bedroom and turned on the hallway light. When the light went on, the insects stopped flying around and I could see they were cockroaches. I grabbed a shoe and killed one and the other flew out the window. I was completely frightened and grossed out. I couldn’t go back to sleep for another few hours. Yes, I loath cockroaches…

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  340. I was a new SAHM with our daughter, we lived in the downstairs apartment, after my hubby left for work i hopped in the shower, after coming out of the bathroom i spied a HUGE black spider crawling in our kitchen! I screamed loud enough to wake the upstairs neighbor, who thankfully was a very kind guy, and he helped me, by killing it. Thanks for the opportunity to win!

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  341. when we lived in North Carolina we lived next to a wooded area, we wood see deer, rabbits and bugs. well our house was a pur hideout for everything when it snowed. One day I was cleaning and clearing out cob webs. I stood up to take a breath and screamed, I was covered in spiders. They were harmless I think, but they were 3 times the size of a normal daddy long legs. I started knocking them off and ran to the shower. I have never touched another cob web since!

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  342. Bug story, how about BEE story.
    So, we were finding dead bee’s in our house for weeks. They would be on the couch, the blinds, the windows and the floor. I am so allergic to bee’s so I was FREAKING OUT!!! I called a company to come out and paid $$$$$ to have them check the whole house and spray. They went into the crawl space and said they saw nothing… After they left, the bee’s kept showing up.
    Cut to 5 months later, the dead of winter. My husband had to go into the crawl space to fix our sump pump. He started SCREAMING!! There was NO way I was jumping down into the crawl to help him. He jumps up and says you can’t believe what I found. I ask him, WHAT? A BEEHIVE. That’s where they were coming from. They were getting into the vents. We called the company back out and they went back down there. The Beehive was the size of a garbage bag. IT WAS HUGE!!!!!!!!
    I hate bee’s…….
    CRAZY!!!

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  343. While renting a home in North Carolina we got roaches. Nothing like waking up in the morning to them living in your CD player, microwave, toaster, and kitchen cabinets. Grossest thing ever. They would pop up out of no where, and were so hard to completely kill. It was a BIG pain. They had to come treat the house 3 different times. I didn’t even want to cook in my kitchen. Nothing electronic could be around or they would burrow in there to live. We ended up getting rid of everything and buying new once the problem was taken care of. It still gives me the chills thinking about those nasty buggers.

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  344. I lived in an all girls dorm in college. One night I heard screaming from a little ways down the hall and thought we might have had some “boys” on the floor from the neighboring dorm doing their best attempt at a panty raid. As I came awake to pounding at my door, I answered it to a little short blonde who screamed “Help, there is a large, mammoth bug in my room and I don’t know what to do.” I grabbed my broom, put on my shoes, walked across the way and looked in expecting a spider. Nope, just a water bug, I walked half way across the room threw my shoe at the bug, killed it and turned around as five “grown” women were standing in the doorway shivering at the icky bug. Apparently, they were all sorority sisters who then in great legally blonde fashion started clapping that I did it. I shrugged….left through the gaggle of “learned helplessness” and became known on the hall as “THE MIGHTY BUG KILLING WITCH”…(witch cause I carried my broom across the hall…and my pjs were black)….Wonder if they ever killed a bug after that… The RA on the floor made a sign for my door sayin just throw a show at it and let me sleep….

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  345. Here in western PA, we have these bugs called stink bugs. They don’t bite or sting, but instead they fly around and crawl all over everything in the house. They also love to divebomb your head when you are outside. There is no chemical that can kill these bugs, and they are hard to get out of the house – we usually have thousands of them inside and outside our house in the spring and fall. Anyway, these bugs are called stink bugs because if you step on them, squish them or threaten them in any way the give off this horrid smell…think dead skunk mixed with some rotten meat and gym bag of a teenager! Yes, they are that gross.
    So one morning, I was sitting down eating my granola cereal while checking my e-mail. I thought I saw a stink bug crawling on my computer but didn’t give it a second thought. A few moments later, as I was eating my cereal, I suddenly smelled that horrific smell…somewhere VERY close to me was a dead stinkbug. I looked all over but could not find it. I shook out the pantleg of my jammies, checked my hair – nothing. Then I started getting this funny tingling in my mouth. It then dawned on me that the stinkbug had crawled into my cereal and thus I accidentially ate it! The smell was so strong and the thought that I ate one was so disgusting that I threw out the granola and didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day.

    So what do you say, Raid? Can you come up with a spray or trap that can get rid of stinkbugs for us? You would make the hundreds of thousands of residents in western PA so happy!

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  347. I had recently purchased my first house in a St. Louis suburb. Young and single, I was terribly proud of myself and my independence. Until they day THEY arrived. At first I thought it was on ordinary spider staring at me from the doorway of the office. I was in the bathroom washing my face for the night and didn’t have my contacts in, so I couldn’t be sure. I walked over to the doorway, put my face right down on it (no contacts in = 12″ distance vision), and it jumped at me. A jumping spider! A jumping spider that can jump two feet in the air! I had no experience with this. After considerable chaos, I was able to capture the mutant spider under a glass canning jar, but I had no way to transfer it without it escaping. Poor creature died a slow painful death over several days while I analyzed what it could possibly be. Looks like a spider, but not really a spider. I scoured the internet with searches for “jumping spider,” “giant jumping spider,” “what is this bug?!?!?!” Another showed up in my kitchen and scurried under the refrigerator. Another was in the extra bedroom. What are they?! Why are they jumping AT me?! Finally, I found a horrible picture online that looked exactly like my little houseguests. Camel crickets. Crickets. Seriously? Crickets are little and black and make noise. Crickets aren’t huge and brown with Michael Jordan verticals! The night of my 30th birthday, I came home very late and very tired. I pulled back the covers of my bed, and there sat a camel cricket on my pillow. He was wearing a party hat and held a sign that said “Happy Birthday!” I smashed him with my shoe, stripped the bed, and slept on the couch. I called the exterminator the next day.

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  348. I was packing my home up for a move from Oklahoma to another state. Not really paying close attention, I grabbed for some of my dishes in a lower cupboard. As I pulled out one of my glass vases, inside was a mean looking spider. Then he moved in the vase! My heart went in my throat. It turns out it was a Brown Recluse spider which are known to inhabit the area we lived in. A Brown Recluse! You could clearly see the distinct violin shape on its back. I was so glad it was in the vase. I filled that vase with so much Raid then covered the top with plastic wrap until that spider was a goner! Then all the thoughts of what if, hit my brain. I could have been bit while packing something. What if there were more? Needless to say, the cupboard….I had someone else, wearing complete body armor, remove all the dishes while I stood some 15 feet away in the other room. Scariest Spider moment ever!

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  349. I have to say, your Hawaii story gives me the creeps! I am going to buy Raid Max® Bug Barrier on my way home!! GROSS! Anywho, When I was little, around 8 or so, my dad was on a six month deployment, when a mother mouse decided to have a nest of babies under the tub. The crawl space for that tub??? Was in MY Closet. And my mother couldn’t stand to kill them – was too grossed out – so she decreed I had to put a trap in my closet every night to kill them. Each and every night, I lay in bed, waiting to hear the snap of the trap. OMG. Then I had to change the trap each morning. It was YEARS before I could stand the smell of peanut butter. And I REFUSE to have anything to do with mice, or gerbils or hamsters!

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  350. When I was a teenager I had the privilege of being allowed to spend the summer in Florida with some family friends. I had to decided if I wanted to stay at Lake Okeechobee with the older folks in a small trailer or stay in Ft. Pierce with the younger and stay in the ‘big house’ by myself. The younger folks lived in a small one bedroom trailer at the back of the orange grove and the ‘big house’ set empty at the front of the grove. There was a cute path between the two so the obvious choice was to stay with the younger folks and actually get to do some really fun stuff rather than being at the lake and living the retirement life. Not cool at 15!! The first few night were great. I had full run of the ‘big house’ and decided I would explore a new room or area every night until I knew every nook and corner of the house, and it was huge! Parts of the house hadn’t been used in five/plus years. As I made my way to one of the most secluded bedrooms, anxious to see what the room held I never dreamed of finding a room filled with roaches! Not your typical everyday roach … those suckers were HUGE. I just knew if they got hold of me I would immediately become roach meat. I screamed and fell just short of freaking out. My screams were heard and the young couple I was hanging out with came running from their little trailer out back. By the time they got to me I was totally spastic and refused to go back in the ‘big house’ even to get my clothes. I ended up spending the rest of my summer vacation sleeping in their living room on a lounge chair! Anything but going back to the ‘big house bug room!” The couple I was staying with ended up going to the ‘big house’ to gather my things and only after they went through every item, piece by piece, would I even offer to touch anything. I still shudder today when I think about how huge those roaches were. Totally gross!

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  352. There are so many interesting bug stories here 🙂

    To add mine I’ve chosen a very simple one. When I was 5 years old, I was at my grandparents house. They had a farm with many apple trees on the property. I was playing outside, wearing a bathing suit (I think we were playing in the water, too). I went to the apple trees for some reason when a honey bee stung me right in the belly button. Ouch! It really did hurt and I haven’t forgotten it. But I am not afraid of bugs. I think most of them are very interesting.

    Thanks for the opportunity to win.

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  353. I don’t know why, but little boys are fascinated with bugs. One night we had friends over for dinner. My son was all excited and told my girlfriend he had something to show her. He walked her over to his swingset and showed her a huge spider. Turns out she’s deathly afraid of spiders. My son was absolutely shocked that she didn’t think it was cool!

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  354. So many bug stores, so little space. Here’s one that’s kinda funny – at my expense.

    When I was about 8 or 9 I was very naive and impressionable. I was visiting my cousin’s house – at the time my Aunt and Uncle had a beautiful back yard with an in ground pool. After a fun afternoon swimming, my cousin decided to trick me. She said I had to change outside. The neighbors weren’t home so nobody would see.

    Naive me believed her, so I changed outside and got stung by a bee while changing. My first every bee sting and I haven’t been hit since but every time I see a bee I think of that story.

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  355. Last summer, as I went to hang a second load of laundry on the line, I noticed a big dark spot on a pair of my daughter’s shorts that were already on the line. I quickly realized that the dark spot wasn’t a spot but a HUGE bug! I ran in to get the camera and took several pictures…it was shades of green and about 2 inches long. I then researched what it might be in my North American Wildlife book and still couldn’t figure it out. I then posted the pictures to facebook asking if anyone might know what it was….turns out it was a Cicada…apparently my book just showed them a different color, so it didn’t occur to me that is what it was. Nice to know it was harmless….but it still gave me the heebie-jeebies! 🙂

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  358. I have dozen of bug stories, from our latest scorpion my son found on my dryer and even a (NON BUG) horrifying snake stretched out in the hall, we moved after the snake. The funniest bug story is a ugly Cockroach with wings, you know those big boys.

    I had a trailer in the country and my husband had just moved in with me. We was going to bed for the night and all of a sudden. He said there’s a big roach, he gabbed a shoe and went to chasing it. It was one of those roaches on steroids. I’m standing in the middle of the bed, pointing there it goes. It goes to flying everywhere, oh there it is landing in the floor. He goes to stomp it…. His back goes out from and recent injury to it. He is there stuck in stomping position…and missed the roach.

    I jump out of the bed and had to chase the bug, the roach finally went to roach heaven. I had to then help my husband get out of stomping position. We have never forgot that and I still laugh about it.

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  359. I just remembered a funny bug story from my childhood (don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!). I started taking ballet when I was 3. By the time I was 8 and 9, I was taking classes almost every day of the week. I was quite accustomed to arriving at the studio, taking off my sneakers and slipping on my ballet shoes, and setting my shoes and my bag on the bench before heading in to meet my teacher.

    When class was over one particular day, I went back to the bench, slipped off my ballet shoes, and stepped into my sneakers. I noticed some straw sticking out between the velcro straps on one of my shoes and picked as much of it out as I could before running out to my mom’s car.

    When I got home, dinner was ready, so I sat down at the kitchen table in my ballet clothes. I started taking off my shoes….and discovered that the “straw” I had been picking out had actually been grasshopper legs. While I was dancing, a grasshopper jumped into my shoe. I dressed so quickly that the poor thing didn’t have time to jump out before I squished him and pulled his legs off one by one.

    Because I was wearing ballet tights, the grasshopper guts were stuck to me. I remember shaking my leg, trying to get the dead grasshopper as far away from me as I could, screaming for my mom to get it off of me FAST!

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  360. I was riding my bike home from a friends house late one evening and decided to cut across the parking lot of a local store…As I did, I noticed the shadow seemed to shift on the ground and heard alot of crunching beneath my wheels…as I approached the light, I realized the whole lot was covered in crickets…it took weeks to get all the guts and parts off of my wheels….

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  361. My funny bug story is not so much about me…but my sister. She HATES bugs…I of course do not mind them. Last summer I was showing her daughters and my sons a fuzzy catipiller…her daughter took it, walked over to her and said…”Mom, don’t be scared it’s soft.” of course…my sister who was getting lunch ready did not realize what was going on, swatted at the bug, it fell and she stepped on it in front of all the kids…needless to say we had to do some explaining!

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  362. On a missons trip to Mexico, we were staying in an old schoolhouse. We put down blue foam pads on the classroom floor, underneath our sleeping bags. At the end of everyday we would come back to a long, moving, blue line, as ants carried away bits of the mattresses! We would pick up the foam, sweep away the bugs and try and sleep, the next day… it started all over again…. we didn’t bring the matresses home! (((shudder)))

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  363. Alright, I’ll give this a shot…
    I don’t have the best story in the world, but my kids like this one:

    When I was about 10 yrs old, a bumble bee went up my pants leg. Of course I did not know this until I sat down. And got stung in the butt. Yes the butt. It was not fun. My mom made me drop my pants (we were in the middle of nowhere) in the front seat of the car so she could find out what was wrong with my butt 🙂

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  364. We recently had a huge outbreak of bugs at work. The worst was when one fell from the ceiling and landed on one girl’s neck. There was definitely some screaming involved!

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  365. My friend brought me a wooden candle holder from Thailand when she returned from a mission trip. Several mornings I would wake up to find a small pile of sawdust on the mantle next to it, and every day I would sweep it up, until we realized there were tiny bugs chewing on the wood! I zapped the candleholder in the microwave for a few minutes and the problem disappeared!

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  370. A few years ago, hubby and I were at a carnival and I ordered some fries. At one point while eating, I had opened my mouth to take another bite and a fly flew into my mouth and I started to choke. It was the worst feeling, not to mention embarassing. Normally that wouldn’t happen but that year the flies were really bad. It sure doesn’t compare to alot of the other stories here but I dont really remember any other situation.

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  371. I don’t like bugs… at all. I’ll never forget when I first moved out on my own. My first night alone went well, but the next morning, I hopped in the shower only to find the world’s biggest spider! I freaked out, and immediately called my mom. I begged her to send my brother over to kill the spider. He came over and swore he was never coming over to kill a bug for me again. After that, I got real good about throwing shoes to kill spiders, then I just had to call someone over to clean up the dead bugs, because I sure as heck wasn’t touching them!

    So glad I’m married and have lots of kids now. There’s always someone here to kill a bug for me! (And clean it up!) 🙂

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  372. we have a big flour bug problem and so we’re constantly trying to pick them up and trash them. i found a cuople “nests” this weekend and vacuumed them up

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  374. In 2007 my husband and 2 children, moved to texas , and there were black crickets everywhere, we have never seen such a thing. I mean you had to walk through hundreds of them to get any where, while they are jumping up all around you, my then 7 yr. old girl was trying to step on them.We went to get our drivers licence, and the maintainance man was vacuuming them up alive, it was gross to say the least. We were having to stay in motels until our house was ready and one night our room had the crickets in the room, in the fridge, the tub, and then one jumped on me in the bed, that was the last draw, we jumped up, packed, and they got us another room.

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  375. When I was 10 or 11 years old, I had a favorite pair of black Keds. I went to put them on one morning, and I instantly felt some wiggling. I screamed, pulled my foot out, and out hopped a big cricket. My grandmother (who spoke only Spanish and could barely communicate with us grandchildren), realized why I was screaming and killed the cricket for me. 🙂

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  377. My worst bug story is when I was talking to some people and a bug flew in my mouth and down my throat so that I swallowed it. Yuck!

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  378. My creepy bug story wasn’t so humourous at the time. I was drinking coffee and a chinese beetle must have flown into it. It wasn’t fun in my mouth.

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  379. I don’t like to think of my bug story – it literally made me throw up – That’s because I woke up in the middle of the night with a spider stuck in my throat. I woke up coughin and gagging and not able to catch my breath – I ran to the bathroom from the gagging and when I got sick in the toilet, there was the source of it all – a spider covered in saliva – which in turn, caused me to throw up again!!
    Not a fun night for me as I stayed awake the rest of the night trying not to throw up anymore from thinking about it. This must have happened almost 6 years ago and it still brings a lump to my throat!!! Bleh!!

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  380. My creepy bug story occurred when we replaced our old well with a new one. The old well was in an old underground cement room of sorts. As the well installer lifted the lid to the entrance, I peered inside the 10 x 10 area to be scared out of my wits. The walls were covered with huge white spiders!!! Ewwwwwww! Even the well guy was freaked out because he had to climb down in there to disconnect the electrical before this area could be filled in. I have never seen any white spiders before and I didn’t know spiders that huge even lived in Michigan. As I write this I still get the chills. Sometimes I still wonder where all those spiders are now since they filled in that room before they built the new well. I haven’t seen those kind again but I still get goosebumps thinking about them!!

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  381. My creepy bug story takes place every day in the spring. I teach library classes to primary children, namely Kindergarteners. Every day there are several winged ants on the carpet where the children sit to listen to stories. Needless to say I am upstaged by these little creatures that crawl around with a room full of Kindergarteners crawling behind them. The children try to catch them, squish them, protect them… and in a matter of seconds, my entire lesson has flown out the window! Just wish the flying ants were flying out the window!

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  382. Back in my younger days, I was living alone in an apartment I had just recently moved into. I had jumped in the shower, wrapped myself in a towel, and headed into the kitchen. In my kitchen was the largest palmetto bug I had ever seen, it looked like some kind of giant bug that you see in museums. I had no bug spray or anything so I quick ran and got a can of hairspray. My heart was racing as I sprayed my hairspray towards it, and it immediately took flight and landed right on my towel, which produced horrifying, toe curling, screams from me. I cannot believe the neighbors didn’t call the police hearing me scream like that! The worse thing was that I didn’t know where the giant creepy mega-bug had gone. I quickly dressed, called my boyfriend and told him while I was at work he must come and kill it for me or I was not sleeping in my apartment that night, I’d have to stay in a hotel. He found it lurking under my dining room table and properly disposed of it. My “boyfriend” (my husband now 16 years later) and I still laugh about it to this day. 🙂

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  383. When I was 6 months pregnant a friend of mine gave us an antique bassinette to use. It was beautiful with white lace draped all around the sides that swept to the floor.
    I was cleaning out the nursery to get ready for baby and we had placed the bassinette in her room while we arranged the furniture. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something black hanging off the side of the bassinette and immediately jumped. I looked at the lace and saw what looked like a HUGE bat hanging off the side of it. I ran so fast I tripped out the door. I slammed the door shut and called my husband at work.
    Now generally he would be working from the office close to our home but he was in a meeting at an office about 45 minutes away. When he got my frantic call, he was very nervous that something had happened to me and the baby. I was hysterical. “There’s a bat in the nursery and I can’t go in there!!! It’s HUGE and about 6″ long and it was staring at me!!! What if it flies into the rest of the house,” I told him. My husband, the ever calm, expecting dad told me he’d come home in an hour and get rid of it. I was only partially relieved because I was afraid it would somehow crawl underneath the 1/4″ door space and “get me.”
    He arrived home within the hour and took a broom upstairs to the nursery. He ducked down as he carefully opened the door and began creeping towards the bassinette. I was instructing him from the hallway (with the door closed) as to where it was hanging on the lace. He finally made his way over to the bassinette in the far corner of the room and found the “bat”.
    He then walked calmly out the room and asked me to come in. I was still trembling with fear and said, “no way! I’m not going near it. What if it bites me and I get rabies?” My husband, who was trying to not crack a smile said it would be safe and dragged me to the bassinette.
    He then informed me to look closer at the “bat” which was actually a moth with a circle patterned on the outside of it’s wings that looked like eyes. He started laughing hysterically. “Homey, you cannot get rabies from a moth,” is what he said to me.
    It was a moth. It was 2″ long. It did have a creepy eye pattern to keep predators, such as a hormone-hysterical, pregnant women, away. It was also DEAD.
    To this day I have never lived this down. Everytime I am afraid of a bug my husband reminds me gently that “No honey, it’s not a bat. It is probably just a dead moth.”

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  384. My parents took me on my first camping trip with family and friends. I ended up in the E.R. Found out I was allergic to most insects. I swelled up like a balloon from mosquitoes. Since then “I FEAR INSECTS”!

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  385. First, I hate spiders. I stopped at the local drug store to pick up a prescription . As I was dashing across the little grassy, tree lined divider in the parking lot, I had to duck under some tree limbs.
    I ran into the store and was standing at the pharamacy counter when the clerk looked at me and gasped. I had baby spiders all over my head!!!! Ahhh… I did a crazy swatting dance with squeaks and squeals. I kept saying ‘do you see any more?’ in a high pitched panicy voice. I had the creepy crawlies for days. Apparently when I duck under that limb, I had walked through a web filled with the newly hatching spiders. I hate spiders.

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  386. Then, there was the time when I was 6 years old, visiting my very favorite cousins down in teeny Weimar, TX. They lived literally out in the middle of NOWHERE, and the only thing to do for fun was go exploring. On the day of this story, we had decided to go out into a neighboring farmer’s cornfield, to see what we could see. A large passenger plane passed directly overhead, and was flying REALLY low considering how far they were from any airport. We of course stopped to marvel at this wondrous sight (we were 6…what do you expect?), and didn’t pay much mind as to WHERE we were stopped. After about 10 seconds, I started feeling crawly and sting-y, and looked down to see what that was about. Turns out, I was literally COVERED from thigh to toe in a swarm of those dreaded fire ants, and they were biting the bejesus out of me!! This set me to howling unmercifully, since I was straight TERRIFIED of all manner of insects. Our trip back to their house seemed to take a lifetime! On hearing my caterwauling, my aunt came outside to see what on earth could be the problem. I knew I was in trouble when my aunt (who was, shall we say, a hardass) turned as white as a sheet and flew into a panic. She turned their waterhose on me, trying to get all those damnable ants off. It took a while, and I had to be stripped of all my clothing to rid myself of them completely. So at the end of the ordeal, I was naked, soaking wet and freezing half to death. Not to mention covered in about 1000 fire ant bites!! I don’t know how many of you have ever been bitten by a fire ant. But their bites itch like an LSD hallucination, and once you scratch them, it burns like hellfire. (Hence the name fire ants.) I was covered completely from the waist down, and also had bites on a great deal of my torso and arms. A MASSIVELY unpleasant thing for any 6-year old, to be sure. Since that day, I’ve been the victim of a highly unbearable ant phobia. I can’t even see one on TV without flying into a terror. Hubs once thought it would be cute to let me be surprised by the ant scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. After I accidentally broke the vacuum cleaner into 4 large chunks in my haste to escape the room, he didn’t think it was so cute anymore. Now, he takes that phobia VERY seriously. LOL!

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  387. Yeeeuck, cockroaches!!! *shudders*

    When I was 7 years old, we lived in a tiny town in Southern California called Niland. It was a short-lived residency, but it resulted in several of the worst stories I have in my arsenal. This is one of those stories. My mom has this thing about bugs. She can’t see a bug, lest she freak out to an extreme most people don’t experience. (I strongly believe she passed this down to us kids, since all of us are total bug-phobes just like Mommy.) At any rate, our time in Niland was during the early summer months, when weather was the hottest. So any vehicle that had been recently driven with the A/C on was a prime target for creepy crawlies of all varieties, so that they could cool off, too. My mom had a brain fart on one of these days, and left the windows down after leaving the car. She of course rolled them back up once she got in to drive the car again, and that led to our problem. While the windows were down, one of those horrifyingly HUGE Madagascan beetle/cockroaches climbed into the car, and took up residence under the passenger seat. Of course, once the windows were back up again, the car was a veritable oven to bake trapped cockroaches in. Once it was time for us to move on to the next town in our string of new towns, we began cleaning out the car. I’ll never forget as long as I live the bloodcurdling, utterly ear-piercing scream my mother let out when she discovered that damn beetle/roach!! It brought neighbors around to our neck of the woods from literally BLOCKS away! Since she couldn’t deal with the sight of a bug that was literally longer than her hand, she had fainted dead away in the parking lot where the car was sitting, and had to be revived. Us kids had to see the monstrosity for ourselves, since kids never do the thing that will cause them LESS grief. I have never forgotten how gigantic that bug was, and I have nightmares about it to this very day. (The incident I’ve described happened in 1987.) So I’m not a fan of any type of cockroach/beetle. And that fact is NEVER going to change.

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  388. I tend to avoid bugs and creepy crawlies…Even when I was seven and got a much begged for container of slime to play with, I couldn’t bring myself to open it because my mom accidently bought the kind with fake worms in it. I couldn’t get my sister to take them out so I could play with the slime. It still gives me shivers!

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  389. I don’t know whether to tell the story about the scorpion that I stepped on while carrying my 6-month-old baby, and the bite caused me to develop “milk fever,” which nearly killed me and my baby. Or there is the time I went into the baby’s nursery and there was a huge black widow, engorged with blood, lying on its back dead near the crib. Or, there was the time the jumping tarantulas nearly landed on my foot while I was carrying the baby out to the car in the night. Or, there was the time I drove home across the desert, and as I entered through the kitchen door, I looked down and saw a huge violin backed brown recluse spider lying dead on my gleaming white kitchen floor thanks to Raid. My daughter had sprayed it to death with a can of Raid she found in the garage, and then she was too afraid to pick up the dead creature with a cloth. Or, there was the time my excessively cheapo ex-husband didn’t want to pay for camping or hotel fees, so he positioned our sleeping bags under the limbs of ancient fruit trees, and hundreds of ear wigs began falling on us through the night, and then there was the time…Oh, the adventures of living in Arizona. So glad I don’t live there now.

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  390. Me and my co-workers were standing around drinking hot chocolate the we had purchased from the vending machine at our shop and one of us noticed that the little brown bits at the bottom of our cups was not unmixed hot chocolate mix bvut was actually ground up cockroaches!!!! Well…that was sickening, disgusting and just awful.

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  391. Please delete my previous comment. This is my bug story!
    Once while visiting my aunt in Louisiana ( I am a yankee, born in Iowa) I woke up, I heard this odd little sound. I can’t quiet describe it. Kind of like a wing flap then a slight scampering of tiny feet. Weird. I got up and my eyes immediately scanned the room when lo and behold I saw a HUMONGOUS cockroach. I SCREAMED in horror and grabbed a shoe and throw it on the bug. The shoe MOVED slightly! YUCK!!!I I picked up the shoe to hit at it again and it FLEW at me.FLEW! And to my horror it wasnt even slightly damaged! Cockroaches don’t FLY do they? I was totally unaware that cockroaches fly! Well in Louisiana they DO! This caused me to break out in a frenzied screaming hysteria trying to search for bug spray ANYWHERE, trying to duck for cover. The roach was VERY angry at me and kept flying at me. Worse yet it summoned a few of it’s friends. I was being chased by a small swarm of ginormous disgusting ROACHES! I hid in the bathroom crying paralyzed by fear until my cousins came and rescued me. I don’t know where those dag gone hideous repulsive little critters went but I haven’t wanted to visit Louisiana since. Later I went to the bathroom late at nigh and when I went to wash my hands two very different looking bugs were on the faucet handle! One a very bright red that I have never seen before or since and a greenish bluish florescent looking creature unlike and I’d ever seen! I am embarrassed to see this but Years later I STILL sleep with a scarf on my head covering my ears because you just never KNOW what creepy crawlies might visit you in the night while you sleep!

    Reply

  392. Once while visiting my aunt in Louisiana I woke up, I heard this odd little sound. I can’t quiet describe it. Kind of like a wing flap then a slight scampering of tiny feet. Weird. I got up and my eyes immediately scanned the room when lo and behold I saw a HUMONGOUS cockroach. I SCREAMED in horror and grabbed a shoe and throw it on the bug. The shoe MOVED slightly! YUCK!!!I I picked up the shoe to hit at it again and it FLEW at me.FLEW! And to my horror it wasnt even slightly damaged! Cockroaches don’t FLY do they? I was totally unaware that cockroaches fly! Well in Louisiana they DO! This caused me to break out in a frenzied screaming hysteria trying to search for bug spray ANYWHERE, trying to duck for cover. The roach was VERY angry at me and kept flying at me. Worse yet it summoned a few of it’s friends. I was being chased by a small swarm of ginormous disgusting ROACHES! I hid in the bathroom crying paralyzed by fear until my cousins came and rescued me. I don’t know where those dag gone hideous repulsive little critters went but I haven’t wanted to visit Louisiana since. Later I went to the bathroom late at nigh and when I went to wash my hands two very different looking bugs were on the faucet handle! I am embarrassed to see this but Years later I STILL sleep with a scarf on my head covering my ears because you just never KNOW what creepy crawlies might visit you in the night while you sleep!

    Reply

  395. My wife and I were out to eat at a buffet. I went to get a plate and I sat back down. I ate a few bites and wiped my mouth with the red cloth napkin that sat on the table. We chatted a bit and I went to pick up my fork. That’s when I saw it. A huge, and I do mean huge, black beetle (a lot like this one: http://is.gd/VNunQm ) on the napkin I had just used to wipe my mouth. It was 2 inches long and waving one tentacle at me. It had to have been in the napkin the whole time because it was BIG and we definitely would have seen it walk across the table if it came from somewhere else.

    I called my wife’s attention to it and we both jumped out of our seats. We must have looked pretty horrified because the waitress came over immediately. We showed the bug to her and she let out a little scream. I informed her we wouldn’t be finishing our meal. I still shudder thinking about that big black beetle being so close to my face. ugggh…

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  396. We bought our house 10 years ago, Had the place painted inside and pest control come two weeks before we moved in. Night one sitting on the back porch I got attacked hubby was pulling Roaches about three inches big out of my hair and clothes. We turned the light on the back porch and the wall was covered in these huge roaches. I called exterminator they said no its not possible that they had to be coming from somewhere else since they were dead the next moring all over the back porch. Night two Hubby and I armed ourselves with flashlights went out to the back porch and there they were. I was now mad and gonna get to the bottom of this we started searching they were on the rock fence went to the side yard they were on the ground, shined the light on the nieghbors wall we only like six feet apart and slowly shined our flash lights going up and up till we watched them pouring out of the next door nieghbors Attic vent. I was grossed out. Next day went to nieghbors with my exterminators buisness card handed it to them and told them. I got a buy one get one free for my nieghbor and that all they had to do was call and it would be free. Trying to play it off as a free thing to not offend my neighbors, took six months of battleing and finally them evil little things were gone for good.
    texaswaitress (at) live (dot) com

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  397. I was a very overprotective mother. If my precious 14 month old Elizabeth got dirty I would freak out unless I could immediately clean her up. One day I was particularly busy with house work. My little Liz was sitting by my sliding glass door and playing very quietly. As I was washing dishes I glanced over at her and saw her chewing. Since I knew I hadnt given her anything to chew on I rushed over to check it out. I dug HALF of a Roly-Poly out of her mouth. I freaked and in tears made an emergency call to her doctor. What he told me was “awww, it wont hurt her. Its just a little bug”. Well let me tell you, the exterminator couldnt get to my house too quickly! Elizabeth is grown now with 2 kids of her own. I made her promise not to feed them bugs,

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  398. I had lived in South Carolina for awhile where they have huge cockroaches. Our apartment didn’t seem to have a problem with them as it was sprayed once in awhile and we hadn’t really seen any.
    One night as I was sould alsleep I woke up to something landing on my face. I swated it off, turn over and went back to sleep. A few mins later i felt something else land on my face. This time I decided to get up to see what is what, As I turned on the light and looked at the celing I could see at least 15 mins cockroaches climb up there. As I watched one fell down onto the bed where i had been sleeping. I grabbed a blanket , throw it over my head and ran out the door screaming. My roomate checked to see what was wrong. He went into my room to get rid of them. When he came out he told me it was a good thing I didn’t look on the bed becuase there were a bunch crawling all over it.

    Reply

  399. When I was 7 I had a tiny room in our unfinished basement and one morning I was wakened by my mother hitting me in the face with a book. I was confused and hurt, as she had never done anything like that to me before, and asked why she would do such a thing and all she offered was, “It’s time to get ready for school.” I went several years thinking she had had a mental-moment with that “wake up” she gave me and finally when I was about 18 I mentioned it to her. “Oh that,” she said nonchalantly, “I didnt’ want to tell you that I was hitting a huge cockroach that had just climbed out of your mouth.” Aaaaaahhh! Even though it happened years earlier I had to go wash my mouth out with Listerine and brush my teeth!

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  400. This is really not my story, it’s my sister’s and being we both hate bugs I can relate. She went to Puerto Rico on vacation (we were to meet her 1 week later in San Juan but she wanted to go to some Island which I don’t recall if it was Culebra Island or something else). So our cousin from P.R. meets her and they stay at this island with no lights or modern amenities. She is packed with her bug spray (because we were raised in NYC and bugs are not our thing) now she says the entire room was covered in bugs, all shapes and sizes, colors and who knows what else. My then nephew was about 7 years old and my sister said she kept using her ‘OFF’ spray and stayed up all night watching over her son. Our cousin and her 2 daughters(of course born/raised in P.R.) went to sleep without a care in the world but my city sister was up and spraying until the sun came out. Talk about forget about my refund check, they left the next day, packed their stuff and never returned to that desolate bug-riddled island. Glad I didn’t fall for it and met her there. Hello, the island was named “Culebra Island”…culebra means snake, like yeah I’ll pass on that one!

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  403. My twin sister and I were given a puppy for our 6th birthday. Imagine our parents’ horror to discover a few weeks later that the puppy had fleas. Not wanting to expose their little girls, my parents took Kristy (the puppy) to the vet for treatment. Then we set out an off-brand bug bomb for fleas in the house and went to my mom’s sister’s house for a week.
    When we got back, I was the first one to enter the house. I remember saying, “Boy, it sure is webby in here,” before I looked down. There were literally THOUSANDS of fleas all over my legs. There were so many fleas throughout the rest of the house that every surface looked black. I was immediately yanked back out of the house. My mom and sister wiped the fleas off my legs while my dad made sure the door was closed securely.
    It took a while, but we finally managed to get rid of the fleas. To this day, I continue to hate fleas with a passion that burns deep within my soul….

    Reply

  404. Just a few months ago I was trying to cut branches that were interfering with the path my horses have to walk to get to their feeding place. It’s important to keep it clear, as it borders a downhill slope that they could fall down if they lost their footing. While cutting one of the last areas, I was all of a sudden attacked by a swarm of mad hornets! It seems I literally stepped in a hornets nest! To make matters worse, I was wearing my torn pants. They were stinging me all over my arms, going for my face, on my legs and they even managed to get inside my pants! I suffered many, many stings all over, and yes, several stings in the most private of private parts!! They swelled into huge red welts and became very itchy! To top it off, I still had to go back and finish pruning!!

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  405. My mom is deathly afraid of bugs. She was away on a business trip and discovered a spider in her room. She went to find a co worker of hers to kill it for her. She brought him back to her room and told him to kill it. The only problem was he was blind. So she proceeded to help him kill the bug by lifting his leg up for him and stomping on the bug. It worked! For Christmas that year my aunt gave her a mannequin leg inside a shoe and that was her “BUG STOMPER”

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  407. Well, I’ve got tons of stories but one that immediately comes to mind…
    My friend and I, when we were in high school, were latchkey kids so we would end up at my house usually to hang out for a while after school. My house backed up to a wooded area so there were bugs and spiders aplenty. However, on this occasion, after spending time together, she went to leave by the front door (which we had come in by an hour earlier) and ran into a spider web across the posts on the porch. She immediately freaked out, ran screaming into the front yard and ripped off her shirt – jumping up and down and waving her arms she begged me to make sure she was spider free. I did so but the whole time I was laughing hysterically. She finally, after being declared spider free, put her shirt back on and went home. After that she always swept the porch posts with a stick before walking through.

    Reply

  408. I lived in Cancun for a few years, and because of its being on the Caribbean, there were tons of roaches. Big ones. Ones that flew. I kinda got used to them and it didn’t even gross me out to spray them, kill them, and scoop them up. But once when we were on the couch watching TV, one flew right down my tank top, Again, I don’t get creeped out easily, but this was too much for me. Flew off the couch and started jumping around while my then-boyfriend, now-husband just laughed at me.

    wolverina401 at gmail dot com

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  409. I’ve got a few of them for sure!
    The funniest was one day I came downstairs and my cat Frank was batting at something in the corner. Then he backed away and started meowing fearfully. I looked in the corner and there was a tiny little potato bug all balled up.

    Reply

  411. my creepy story is my husband and I were in Mexico a few years ago and he had an itch in his back, asked me to scratch it, well when I found the site it looked like a scab of some sort. I took my nails and picked out what looked like thin strip on something, then it moved in my palm. It turned out to be a BOT FLY lava, that had burrowed in his skin from a mosquito. It was using his body as a host, it was a magot using his body to hatch to a bot fly, yuk!!

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  412. My mother-in-law was afraid of spiders. One day, while she was visiting us, I found a huge spider in the bathroom and killed it. My toddler daughter, witnessing the spider killing, promptly went to her Grandma and announced, “Grandma–there’s a big spider and it was -crawling on your stuff in the bathroom!” My mother-in-law turned white and requested to use the other bathroom for the rest of her stay.

    Reply

  413. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught that look on my 15 month old’s face. That sideways grind-mash jaw sliding. With drool. I’d seen it before: rug lint, food scraps from under the table, dirt, grass, whatever. Quick finger sweep. It was a big fat ear wig. No RAID for this story. But plenty of creep-out. She’s 30 now, but I still remember.

    Reply

  414. When I was 18, I got a new job…at a bug show. The show consisted of walking around letting people look at giant millipedes, giving “fun” facts about our tarantula, and the grand finale of the show was having a lucky audience member come up and EAT a bug.

    One day, we had no takers. So my boss, called for the resident bug eater to come out and show everyone that eating a bug was nutritious and fun! Guess who the “resident bug eater” was? ME! I had the “privilege” of crunching down on a cricket, while remembering to smile AND chew with my mouth open so the huge crowd could hear the loud cruch.

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  415. As a Homecare Physical Therapist, you expect the unexpected, when you first walk into a home. You learn to ignore things, like the smell of cat urine on carpet, cluttered messes, and tiny homes. But, sometimes there are problems going on, in a home, that you cannot ignore. I was out to a home, for a first visit, to see a child. A very extended family, along with many dogs, a few iguanas and several cats also lived in this cramped home. Unfortunately, they had to share their space with the what could probably have been the worlds worst cockroach infestation. As I was working with this child, and older sibling, kept saying to her mom “MOM, LOOK there’s another one!” Pointing to one of about a million cockroaches that made up the floor/counter covering in the home. You couldn’t step anywhere, without the skittering of hundreds of these bugs around your feet. Her mother, told her to hush, as if I couldn’t see the millions of cockroaches underfoot, above foot and just everywhere the eye can see. I wouldn’t sit down on the floor, on the furniture. I just squatted on the floor for my entire 45 minute visit. When I left, and before I reached my car, I prayed that none of those bugs left with me, and none did. But, after I was out of sight of that home, I jumped out of my car, and peeled off my shoes, and checked myself out for any more bugs. I had the fortunate opportunity to return weekly for six months, and nothing changed, the cockroaches continued to be the primary inhabitants, allowing the humans and their pets to cohabitate with them. I still shiver to this day thinking about the house made up of cockroaches, and have never been in a situation like that since.

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  417. Apparently when i was a kid,i used to EAT crickets. Thnking the lord i DO NOT remember this. I am completely disgusted. And i also used to pull off grasshoppers legs,and laugh when they couldn’t jump. I’m mean i know ,lol.

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  418. I am literally phobic of spiders. One morning I walked through a spider web going to my car. I always get the heebie jeebies after that happens anyhow. You feel the web tickling you for a bit and it freaks you out for a while. I shook it off and start driving. Feeling the sensation of a web on my face, I look up into the rear view mirror and there is was a huge spider on my cheek~ i totally pulled over to the side of the road got out of my car screaming, flapping my arms, jumping up and down…..totally grossed me out and looked like a fool to boot~!!

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  419. When I was 16, I spent a long weekend in Eagle, WI, with my friend and her grandmother, at her grandmother’s cabin. My friend was completely freaked out at the thought of baiting her fish hooks with live minnows. No problem, I did all of the baiting. She returned the favor, the next morning, when I couldn’t find my glasses, but was still able to see something moving in my bag of clothing. I called, loudly, for my friend to come and see what it was. Oh yeah, it was a wolf spider. They are the Wisconsin equivalent of the trantula!!! My friend used a running shoe to beat it to death. It did not die quickly, either. It kept bouncing off of the floor, every time she hit it. I had the “heebie geebies” for the rest of the weekend…

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  420. After college, two roommates and I shared a townhouse on Grove Street, near the Ashley River and The Citadel in Charleston, SC.

    One hot, sultry, summer night I woke up to a tickling on (not in) my throat. I swiped at my neck and dozed back off. Minutes later the sweep of little feet on my neck woke me up fully. With one hand reaching for the bedside lamp, I grabbed at the bug with the other and threw it with all my might across the room. The small light from the lamp didn’t shine into all the dark corners so I hopped out of the bed . When I reached for the wall switch I felt something in my hand and, after putting on my glasses, I peered at the object in the palm of my hand. One leg. One rather large appendage of the Palmetto bug variety. I searched the room for the culprit but never found him. From that night on I slept with the sheets pulled up under my chin.

    A week later I came home from work and heard one of my roommates beating on the walls of her room. She looked hilarious. She’d been in the middle of changing from her work clothing to lounging outfit and wore only a slip with a high-heeled shoe held high in one hand as she stood on her bed chasing a Palmetto bug across the wall.

    “Whatcha doing?” I leaned against the doorframe.

    “Trying to kill this darn bug. You wouldn’t think he’d be so quick since he’s missing a leg.”

    At that I lurched for her other shoe and joined her on the bed to help her kill the stinker.

    Revenge at last. Yes, it was sweet.

    Please note Palmetto bugs are HUGE water bugs that prefer the indoors, just like you and me, if it is hot, rainy or nasty weather outside. Just stomp on them … also note that some can FLY.

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  421. When I was about 15, several of us were spending the night at a girlfriend’s house. Her mom had just gotten new dining room furniture and was really proud of the bargain she’d gotten. Someone went into the kitchen about 3 a.m. for a glass of water, turned on a light, and the dining room looked like your Hawaiian hotel with baby cockroaches scurrying everywhere. We spent some time screaming and carrying on, but eventually went back to sleep. Her mom got rid of the furniture the next day, but we didn’t have another pajama party there for a long time. And I still hate cockroaches!

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  422. My bug story is not actually about me, but my childhood friend. She emigrated from Russia at about 12 years old, and we bonded right away. She was home alone, and phoned me in a panic, crying about poisonous bugs all over the apartment. She had locked herself in the bathroom and was calling our house for help. When we asked more questions, it turned out the poison bugs were ladybugs. She had assumed they were poison because she’d never seen a bug that brightly colored. A lot of brightly colored creatures and fungi are the poisonous ones, so she assumed the same rule applied.

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  423. Every late summer/early fall in Indiana we have a ladybug/beetle invasion of sorts. At this time it doesn’t matter how clean or fancy your house is, they get in EVERYONE’S homes. They are in the windows, on the curtains, hanging out in the light fixtures, EVERYWHERE. Of course, where there are bugs there are going to be little bug corpses that constantly have to be swept up. One day, while cleaning the house, my almost two year old son decided to “help” me. He proceeded to pick up one of the beetle corpses off of the floor and EAT it!! It happened so fast that before I could even react I heard the crunch of the bug between his teeth. He looked at me and said “Ewwww” and spit out the remains, then turned around and picked up another one and ate it as well! I don’t know if he thought that the next one would taste better or what? And maybe it did, because he swallowed that one! It was horrible! I thought I would die, and the worst part was, from that point on, he would eat them anytime he saw them! I guess this was just a momentary phase he was going through, because now he is a happy, healthy four year old that DOES NOT eat bugs anymore, I am quite happy to report.

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  424. My husband was out of town on a business trip. Our daughter, then 10 years old, slept with me while he was gone. One night, about 2:30 a.m. I heard this very faint whisper saying “Mom”, “Mom”! I instantly woke up and my daughter whispered again in a very soft voice “What is that noise?” I listened and very soon I heard a scratching sound that sounded like it was right by our window which was right next to our bed. My heart almost stopped and neither one of us would move. Very soon the noise was there again. I knew it was a definite “something for real sound” but didn’t know what it was or what to do since the sound was so close by. After listening to the scratching sound for several minutes I finally remembered recently cleaning with our dust buster. It was plugged in near our bed. I then got up and bent over and listened near it and sure enough the scratching soon started once again! I had vacuumed up a hard back bug and that was the scratching sound! We still laugh about that but at the time we were absolutely terrified! To prevent that from happening again I try to always clean by vacuum after each use!!

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  425. I don’t do bugs. There, i said it. I have been deathly afraid of spiders and other creepy crawlies since I was a little girl. I don’t know what instilled this fear but it is fully ingrained.

    Back in ’75 I was a private in the US Army. During my basic training in South Carolina during July and August,,,major SPIDER MONTHS,,,, I had to go on bivouac,,,,or camping for you non-military types. We were allowed to go to a small Post Exchange….think 7-11,,,,before our 3 days, in the woods. Most of my fellow Army campers were buying packs of Kool-aid, sodas, People magazines, potatoe chips, crackers and list goes on and on. I was the only one in my aisle. I stood before the bounty I was after reading about square foot coverage, I was standing in the RAID aisle! Potato chips be damned! I bought 7 cans of RAID because that’s all I had money for.

    So we get out to the bivouac area and we have to start putting up our canvas sided homes,,, read that as tents,,,that we’ll live in for the next three days, two nights. My partner, Kathy, who had the other half of our pup tent started to spread out the “floor” of our tent. I quickly stopped her and explained that I would spray RAID first. She quickly agreed that was a good idea. Once the floor was laid I sprayed it liberally with RAID too. Next came the pup tent sides, again sprayed when the last stake was in the ground. One can down. We then each took a can and THOROUGHLY sprayed a ten foot perimeter around our tent. We layed out our sleeping bags and….you guessed it, sprayed them, inside and out. We wouldn’t be sleeping in them for hours yet so they would have time to air out. Murmurs were running through the bivouac area, “why didn’t “I” think to get RAID” “why did “I” spend money on chips, I never gave a thought to bugs!” As you can imagine everyone wanted to “borrow” one of my cans of RAID. Uh-uh, no way, no how, not in this lifetime! It was time for us to turn in and Kathy and I covered that same ten foot perimeter with another can of bug killer. Since we had a male drill sgt, he couldn’t stay in the field with us but happened to walk through the tent area before taking his leave. I heard my name bellowed…..Private R _ _ _ _ _! I ran front and center wondering what I had done because his tone didn’t give off good vibes.. He got face to face with me and asked rather loudly, “What is that smell I smell?” I replied proudly, “Drill SGT, you smell RAID!” Yes, proudly, being the good soldier I thought I showed a good thought process and took action to correct a problem. He stepped even closer and yelled, “Private R _ _ _ _ _ who gave you permission to defoliate my forest?” Uh-oh, I’m in trouble. I didn’t know what to say so I just stood there. One step closer and we are nose to nose. “Private R _ _ _ _ _, WHY did you try to defoliate my forest?” Thoughts of court martial were going through my mind or even worse a dishonarble discharge! I was aware of all the others in my squad standing still and just watching. I was so scared, I had never had anyone in my life stand nose to nose with me and scream at me as only a drill Sgt can do. I could feel my bottom lip start to quiver and I blinked rapidly to hold back the tears. He screamed it again,,,,,”:WHY????” In a voice barely above a whisper I replied, “Because I don’t do bugs Drill SGT.” He took a step back, stared at me, and busted out laughing! One step closer and in a voice low enough that just I could hear he said, “Good thinking Private, I don’t do bugs either and I’m glad I’m going home” Throughout the next two nights we heard screams of “Somethings crawling on me!” Other squad members had to deal with chigger bites, mosqitoe bites, and small spider bites and let’s face it, they didn’t get a good night’s sleep. Kathy and I, we smiled and turned over in our bug free tent and went to sleep.

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  426. My bug story happened at work. I was in my coworker’s office discussing a project, when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. Well, I looked around and all I saw was her candy-filled bowl and some folders. We kept talking – until I KNOW I saw something move again. This time, I saw what it was – a giant roach IN her open-lid candy dish (that we all grab candy from at will). This roach was crawling all over the candies in the bowl, unable to escape the slippery coating of the small candies! EW! We both started shrieking until one of the male coworkers came to see what the fuss was. When we showed him the roach practically swimming in the candies, our fearless coworker did the unthinkable – he REACHED INTO THE BOWL and GRABBED the roach WITH HIS BARE HAND! Then, he carried it outside and set it free. That candy dish was promptly trashed, and that night, I went out and bought my friend a candy dish WITH A LID to avoid this ever happening again!

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  427. I was pregnant and my husband worked a good 1.5-2hrs away from home. Usually he got home around 8 at night, and sometimes later. I was going to walk upstairs to put away some laundry and there was the biggest, blackest spider I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I ran back down stairs and grabbed a can of bug spray and literally used the entire can on him… and he didn’t die. I didn’t know what to do. I was too terrified to get close enough to squish him… he could run up my leg and all… so what did i do? I grabbed a tubberware bowl and threw it on top of him.. and then stacked 2 heavy books on top of that.. he wasn’t escaping. When my husband came home he got rid of the horrible spider for me… laughing all the way.

    brittneydejajason (@) gmail(dot)com

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  429. My husband and son went on a scouting overnight at a nearby zoo. They visited the nocturnal section with lots of creepy crawlies. A few days later, my husband and I were on a date and as we were sitting at a drive-in restaurant eating ice cream in our van, I felt something on my foot. It was a HUGE brown cockroach. I nearly fainted as I quickly jumped out of the van. My husband said it must have come from the exhibit at the zoo because there were giant cockroaches there. It must have hitched a ride in their backpacks or sleeping bags. We never did find it again which made being in the van a little creepy.

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  430. Some ladies see a mouse and jump on the table and scream like little girls. im that way with roaches. seriously, i would have run from that hotel room to canada. forget water, i would be running so fast it wouldnt be an issue. your story made me cry on the inside. o.O

    For me my issue is things with wings. When i was about 7 i was riding my bike and got attacked by a june bug. I didnt know they were harmless and blind. i fell off my bike and ran, with it chasing me. i screamed bloody murder and got lectured by my friend’s dad. Now I assume anything that flies is trying to kill me and i run, fast and in the other direction.

    :: blushes ::

    ferriza2(at)yahoo(dot)com

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  431. This actually just happened to me last week. I was reorganizing my garage at 10 pm with my cousin Ricky. We were constantly bothered by June bugs..I don’t know if that’s what they are really called, as my husband who is from England insist that they are called dune bugs, but whatever…Those little buggers scare the living crap out of me. Those suckers land and then fly and make this God awful noise when they get close to your ears, plus I just know one is going to land in my hair and live in it forever. Well, I saw one on the ground and I was going to kill that dang thing, if it killed me. I am also disalbed and use a scooter for mobility. This bug looked all still like, so I turned my scooter on high and made a bee line and charged for that SOB. Well, that SOB had the nerve to start flying right when I got one inch from it, and I started screaming and switched controls on my scooter and I went flying all the way backwards out of my garage and almost flipping out of my scooter. My husband laughed his butt off. But I hate those things. They crunch when you step on them..yuck yuck yuck.

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  432. My great grandmother taught me that there is beauty everywhere in Nature, even in the bug world. She had the most amazing green thumb, she’d always attract butterflies, and through her I had developed quite a fascination with them. Even when she taught me that they started off as caterpillers which creeped me out at first, it was an amazing lesson about transformation. Not only do I still love butterflies, but they have always been a symbol of change, transformation and guidance in our family, and years later, the subject of my blog! 🙂

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  433. I’ve never really had a bug phobia until I met my husbad. While we were dating we spent many weekends in the woods before hunting season came in looking for tell tale signs of bucks. One day we happened upon a huge open field, and thinking nothing of it, started to walk through it. He was behind me, and all of a sudden I felt things hitting my back and flying past me out of the corner of my eye. To my horror there were grasshoppers hopping/flying everywhere. All the while, he is laughing and throwing them at me while I’m screaming, and running for my life.

    Fast forward 8 years and my daughter and I are driving down to my moms house on a beautiful day. We had the windows down and all of a sudden and HUGE MONSTER grasshopper flew into my window and landed on my shoulder. How I managed to pull over and not crash is a mystery. I made my daugher get out of the car and remove it from my shoulder. Yes, I made her do it, and I’m not ashamed. Thankfully she is not scared of bugs, nor did I scar her for life when that incident happened!

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  434. When my daughter was 19 months old my father was her babysitter. She was in her playpen in the living room. My dad was out front of my tiny appartment but had the door open so he could hear her, we didn’t have a screen door so he was letting in all the flies. He heard her yelling and and came in to check on her. She pointed at a fly on the ceiling that she was talking to and my dad whacked it with a newspaper. My daughter freaked out got very upset and was crying because pop pop killed her friend. A week later I came home to find my dad chasing and sucking up flies with the vacuum cleaner hose. He explained that he was trying to get rid of the flies in the house without upsetting her again. She was giggling at him cause he looked like he was dancing trying to chase them with the hose. I was no more good.

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  435. While in Punta Canta I was in a tourest shop and I picked a picture off the wall to purchase it. A big hairy tarantula spider ran down my arm. I screamed so loud and dropped the picture that everyone in the store came running. Well the clerk assured me that this was the good type of tarantula and not a bad one. When I went to pick the picture up off the floor there was a 6 inch beetle of some kind on my foot. I handed the clerk money and ran out of that store.

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  440. Just as it started getting warmer outside this year we had lied down in bed, lights out, almost asleep when my husband felt something crawling on him so he jumped up to turn on the light. It was freaky, I can never rest when I think there is a bug in the room, so we tore the room apart looking for it. Finally we found the lil pest and it was a tiny little dust spider. LOL

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  441. When I went to Bible Camp they had these huge black pine beetles. They were harmless but pretty creepy looking, even if you’re not easily grossed out by bugs. One flew over and landed in my hair, instead of trying to help me out all the girls in my cabin screamed and screamed and jumped up and down, I was left flinging my head around trying to figure out how to pull it out of my hair without actually touching it–Bleck!!!!

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  442. I have so many bug/insect/creepy crawly stories its hard to pick just one!! My most recent memorable one was a year and a half ago. I had just moved into a newly built home while my husband was deployed in Iraq. After finally getting my toddler to sleep, I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cat batting at something. It was a 3 inch scorpion!! I didn’t even know scorpions were in the area, let alone ambling around my bathroom!! I, of course, got about two inches away from it so I could study it…and it didn’t even seem to mind. It slowly made its way around the entire bathroom. I really didn’t know what to do, so I pulled all the cotton balls out of a glass container and slammed the container over the scorpion to keep it in one spot. Then I frantically called a friend to ask her what to do. She laughed hysterically, told me to grab a shoe, and smash it. Ummm, no thanks.

    I can’t even handle crushing a pill bug, and listening to its shell crack…you want me to crush a scorpion with a freaking exoskeleton??? NOOOOOO. Yuck. I can just imagine the goo I’d have to clean up. I decide a better option would be to get the bug spray, lift the glass container just a smidgeon and suffocate the bastard.

    See the above paragraph with the word “exoskeleton”?? Should have clued me in that bug spray doesn’t work. Dammit. (my friend is still on the phone, giggling uncontrollably at my antics.) So I decide to take a look at the sucker, and move the container to see him move. I move it back and forth, faster and faster, forcing the thing to start speeding up his crawling. I notice now his tail, which had been rather lax and calm, is alert and straight up. I nonchalantly wonder why this may be, and my rather amused friend has to say, “uh, dumbass, its because you’re pissing it off!” Oh.

    Needless to say, after “playing” with a scorpion for the better part of 30 minutes, I finally work up the courage to put on one of my husband’s military work boots and smash the thing. I then take the boot, carcass still attached, directly out to the trash and frantically thrash the boot against the trash can to remove the carcass. I’m proud of myself for conquering the scorpion by myself, and also calmly grabbing my camera to snap a few photos for posterity. 🙂

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  445. Your cockroach story made me think of what it’s like back home in Florida. We have “palmetto bugs” – giant flying roaches. Very icky!

    Years ago, one got in my friend’s house. He thought it would be really funny to set it on fire with his Bic lighter. It crawled away very quickly, as you might expect. It went right under the closet door. My doofus friend didn’t think much of it until the whole closet was on fire!!!

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  448. Every day before I step into the shower I survey the bathtub for creepy crawlers.  On this particular day I did not see any so I stepped inside and proceeded to take my shower.  I turned around to get the shampoo and when I turned back around there was a big cockroach at my feet!  I tried to wash my unwanted guest down the drain, but there was not enough water coming down.  I ended up having to use my toe to get the cockroach to go down the drain.  I immediately closed the drain and did not open it until I was safely out!

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  449. I was just married and we were very excited to be living in a great condo style apartment (or at least we thought it was at the time) We both were working long hours and my husband was also traveling. Being busy young people we ate out a lot but during one of his trips I decided to make supper for myself.

    Upon opening a food cupboard to my utter horror there, in all their glory, were cockroaches crawling all over our food and not only in our cupboards but also in the stove display! How they got in there I will never know or care to know. Calling my parents crying hysterically and screaming that I could never live in a place like this I promptly moved back home!

    All the condo units had been infested with cockroaches and had to be fumigated. When the lease expired we moved out immediately or if I recall, even beforehand!

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  450. A couple of years ago, we had a bit of a ladybug infestation in our living room window. There were hundreds of them crawling all over the window and the sill. One night, my husband and I were laying in bed, ready to fall asleep. He has sleep apnea and uses a mask at night. So, he puts his mask on, and starts to fall asleep. Then he takes it off and says he can smell the ladybugs. I tell him I can’t smell anything. He puts the mask back on, and it ramps up a little more, and he falls closer to sleep. Again, he takes it off and says, “Ugh, I can’t get that smell out of my head.” I tell him, ‘put your mask back on and take some deep breaths, once you fall asleep, it won’t bother you.’ So, he puts the mask on and falls asleep. About 3 minutes later, he starts choking and gagging and ripping at the mask like a crazed man. Apparently, many of those ladybugs had gotten into the mask, and as he did “deep breathing” to relax, he sucked them right up into his nose and mouth!!! I think he vomited ten times before he got over it. His horrible fear of bugs at night comes from earlier in our marriage, when I would sneak our infant daughter’s Gloworm into bed with us, wait until he fell asleep, and then say his name in a really startled tone. Just as he opened his eyes in panic, I would squeeze its belly and light it up, lol. He would yell like a little girl and jump out of bed so fast. I got him every time! 🙂

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  451. I used to work as a psychiatric nurse with the mentally ill who weren’t getting the services they needed. I met a man who was living in a condemned building, and found him another place to live. He was very timid and reluctant to move so I gave him my word I would make sure every one of his many books would be carefully packed and put in the same order in the bookshelves in his new apartment. That was before bedbugs were a common problem, but I got a crash course. Turns out the place was infested, and I had given my word. Hot water kills bed bugs, but you can’t wash a book, steam a book or even bake a book. The only choice was to freeze them. For a month I went to the house every day after work, put on coveralls, put books in bags, went to my car, took off the coveralls, rebagged the books, took them home and froze them for 3 days before I finally could deliver them a bit at a time to the fellows apartment. A month of lengthy showers, laundry and imagining things crawling on my skin. Bedbugs instill terror in my heart to this day.

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  452. I am not a huge fan of bugs. I mean who really enjoys the thought of some creepy crawly creature crawling up their body. Never mind the possibility that it might bite you and inject some poisonous venom, causing a painful slow death. My biggest fear of bugs comes from the ones that might catch you unaware, while your asleep at night. When I was pregnant with my first child we went to visit my mother and father-in-law. My mother-in-law loved to hang the laundry out on the clothes line. Living in the south we have a lot of nice days for drying clothes, plus it is a lot cheaper than having to dry them in the dryer. One night I woke up because something kept tickling my forehead. I woke up rubbing at my head and came quickly awake when I realized there was actually something crawling on my head. I jumped up out of the bed dragging the covers with me and switching the lights on. There where I had been minutes before was a huge black spider and at the foot of the bed was a beetle of some sort. They had come in with the laundry getting folded up with the warm sweet smelling sheets. I had always wondered why my dear husband always pulled the covers all the way back when getting into the bed. Especially when we traveled. Years of hitch-hiking bugs had made him a weary bed fellow. My poor mother-in-law felt so bad that she no longer dried her linens on the clothesline and I now also check under the covers before getting into bed. The old saying “don’t let the bedbugs bite!” now had a totally new meaning.

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  453. I went on vacation and out of the office for 3 weeks a couple of years ago. I left my Brita water pitcher on my desk and on my first day back at work, I automatically filled up pitcher with water and was drinking from that pitcher all morning. It was a busy morning and I had a lot to catch up on but I finally had a quiet moment and happened to look at my see thru pitcher and noticed that the water was green. I quickly checked it out and… here comes the gross part: there was a floating dead cockroach inside the pitcher!!!! It had drowned and some its parts had disintegrated in the water! I couldn’t believe how clueless I was but the folks at work and I had a good laugh about the whole thing. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” And I’m still alive and well!

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  454. One of the worst things in the world to taste in your mouth is a fly…I unfortunately have had the pleasure.:) Yummy! Thank you!

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  455. We’ve been in our house for 8 years. We get small spiders and centipedes. They completely ook me out, my husband has to get them. One day, he wasn’t home and there was a centipede crawling on the floor. Thinking I was brave, I covered it with a cup, so it wouldn’t get away and hubby could get it when he got home. By the time he got home from work a few hours later, and lifted the cup… it was dead! I still won’t get the things. One time, not too long ago, I had my 6 year-old son shake shoes out off the back porch because I thought a centipede fell into one…

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  456. Once, a wasp somehow made its way into the basement laundry room. It was in the window trying to get out. I saw it out of the corner of my eye and immediately panicked. I dropped what I was doing and ran from the room. I closed the door and waited for someone else to deal with it.

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  457. When I was a kid, my younger brother smuggled a worm into our house. It was going to be his beloved pet. He even named his pet worm Joey. My parents have never been ones to notice much, so getting away with having a pet worm was easy street. Three days into having this worm live in our house (and I’m not so sure that it was still alive at this point), Joey was in the hallway doing his normal wormy routine (nothing) when my Mother decided that she needed to use the restroom. She was moving at warp speed down our hallway and was headed straight for Joey. Before we had a chance to say anything, she stepped on Joey and continued to carry him down the hallway never noticing the poor little worm attached to her heel. What makes this stick out in my mind so much is that right as my Mother stepped on Joey, my little brother said, “Well, there goes the worm.”

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  458. Once when I was about 4, I noticed a bumblebee in the screen of the door. I knew I shouldn’t touch it with my hands because it would sting. Somehow that made me decide to headbut it. It died but my head got stung.

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  461. I remember when I was in my early twenties. I had rented a studio apartment and was finally resting on my sofa watching a little tv. All of a sudden this huge shadow of a roach appears on the wall behind the tv. I screamed so loud..the neighbors came running over. It ended up being a tiny Palmetto bug. I was very embarassed but at least the neighbors got a good laugh.

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  465. My husband and I were remodeling a house, and I had this hammer in my hand. I went to move the plastic tarp, because it was catching on the ladder I was trying to move, and I saw a two inch red scorpion.

    Now, I’m normally a soft spoken southern girl, but when I saw that thing, I screamed at the top of my lungs repeatedly, while pounding that sucker with my hammer.

    That seemed to take a long time, but when it was all said and done, there was nothing but bug juice, and my husband had a really odd look on his face. He didn’t say anything. He was waiting for me to put the hammer down, before he said a word, or came any closer!

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  466. When I was 4, I was fascinated with bugs. Let me rephrase. I was fascinated with *LADY*bugs. The other creepy crawlies I could not care for and for the most part they scared me out of my wits. But not ladybugs. I thought they were magical and beautiful and every time I found one, I’d grab it between my hands and run in the house to introduce my new friend to my mom.

    One day, I decided to share my love of ladybugs with Pogo, my father’s beloved dog that was around many years before my brother or I made an appearance in this world. Pogo was quite interested in my ladybug friend, and showed his affection by sniffing my bug right up his nose.

    The next day, Pogo died.

    For 14 years, I believed I killed Pogo with a lady bug. It wasn’t until Christmas my first year at college that I discovered Pogo’s true cause of death. I don’t remember how the conversation started, but we were all apologizing for things we did as a kid, and I apologized to my parents for killing Pogo with a ladybug. My father laughed and informed me Pogo had cancer and they put him down.

    Even though the lady bugs have been cleared, I am still afraid of them to this day. I feel like they’re unlucky. Even if they aren’t responsible for killing my dog.

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  467. When I was in college the apartment above mine had a pipe break. Since it was college, the upstairs neighbors were drunk and slept through it. I was gone for the night so the water ran full speed for at least 8 hours. They had to spray anti mold stuff on the floors and walls and let it dry before anything could be replaced. I went to sleep one night before it was dry and woke up feeling something ticklish on my face. I woke up and brushed it away. As soon as I moved hundreds of centipedes went running in every direction. Luckily very few of them were actually on me but they ended up in my laundry and other belongings. I still have a huge fear of centipedes. The worst thing is they have a life span of 5-7 years so they always haunt me even if I see them outside.

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  468. I was sitting on the ground doing yardwork-weeding-and something was biting me. I literally had ants in my pants!

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  469. When I was pregnant with my daughter I had went outside to check the mail, as I was standing on the porch step, looking down the hill debating if I really wanted to walk down it then back up it, a LIZARD ran across my bare foot. I was about 8.5 months pregnant, and screamed, I’m sure the neighbors thought I was in labor.

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  470. one time I saw a big spider on my porch so i trapped it under a Frisbee – I then pounded on the frisbee with my hand to kill the spider. Much to my surprise HUNDREDS of baby spiders came running out from under the frisbee ,…talk about nightmare inducing situation,…..

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  471. While sleeping one year at summer camp, I kept waking up to swat a bug away from my ear. After swatting several times and still hearing the bug buzzing, I woke up. After I was able to orient myself, I realized that the bug was not flying around my ear, but IN MY EAR!!! After waking up several other girls, they told me to go get my mom (who was a camp leader). My mom, being the wise and wonderful woman she is, got contact solution and poured it in my ear. Then she held my ear shut while I could hear the bug making awful sounds as it was drowned. Awesome, huh?

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  472. I remember when me and my siblings were still kids and we were playing inside our house chasing each other. Then we saw a cockroach flying and it landed on my sister’s back. She screamed and was chasing us begging us to help her get the cockroach off her back. We were all scared so we ran away from her until she finally was able to get the roach off her back. We laughed so hard after.

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  473. I hate — HATE — bugs. And, I have this intense aversion to killing them by stepping/stomping/jumping on them…there’s something about the feel of a bug getting squished under the sole of my shoe that just makes me gag, not to mention the sound it makes. So…imagine my horrific reaction to finding cricket(s) in my home. Not in the basement or on the porch…no, IN my home, like the living room. But, I digress.

    When it’s cricket season, my eyes are constantly scanning the room when I’m in it, because (of course) I have “camel crickets” (I’m not making this up)…these HUGE, spider like looking crickets, with these huge, arched legs that jump like a few feet at a time and (this is the best part) MAKE NO NOISE. So, you don’t even know they’re there, until you see them. Glorious! But, anywho…I was sitting on the couch and felt something on my foot (I was wearing socks…if I had been barefoot, I probably would have had a heart attack) and looked down to see one of these monstrous beasts ON my foot. Well, needless to say, I practically dislocated something flinging my leg in the air, knocking this predator of my foot and halfway across the room.

    At this point, I am FREAKING out, in panic mode, trying to figure out how to contain this sucker and kill it while leaving the room to get a weapon of some sort. I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a broom and came back in, scanning the carpet for the cricket. I spotted him and swung this broom over my head with the kind of force Babe Ruth slugged home runs and brought it down upon the cricket. I must have misjudged the distance, because this monster then hopped through the bristles, landing a few feet away. I wouldn’t make that mistake again!

    Gauging this a life or death swing, I again brought down the broom with so much energy, the broom broke in half. I didn’t stick around to see if the cricket survived, because I was pretty sure he did. I high-tailed it to my bedroom — on the second floor, shut the door, and stayed in my bed the rest of the night. When my husband got home the next morning (he was working night shift), I heard him when he discovered the broom pieces, “Uh oh…Cricket Patrol…” Yeah, I don’t handle bug confrontations well.

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  475. One summer while I was sweeping the kitchen floor, I noticed the dirt moving. I swept it back into place and it still moved. There was no wind in my home at the time; upon closer inspection it wasn’t dirt at all, but ants!
    Thankfully I was wearing shoes and squished the buggers flat, continuing with my sweeping.

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  476. I love this contest!
    My 250lb husband that can bench press 445lbs, not to brag:) is terrified of bugs. Especially spiders. This year for some reason while visiting the local mall toy store I payed a dollar for a big fake spider that jumped when you squeezed a little bladder attached to it. For April fools day I put the spider in my husbands workout shorts. I waited so eagerly for my husband to scream like a little girl when he found a big hairy spider in his shorts but he didn’t put them on right away when he got home from work that day. That night at bedtime, I made sure it was still where I put it and I got into bed and pretended to read. To my udder delight he picked up his shorts and the spider promptly fell to the floor making my husband look and screech at the top of his lungs. Hubby then grasped his chest trying to catch his breath while I was trying my best not to wet the bed from laughing so hard. That night after a few choice words he made me swear not to bring the spider out EVER again. Of course I couldn’t let the best dollar I ever spent go to waste so I hid it in my dresser. I love to scare him and once in awhile he gets me back. Here is a blog entry from a few years ago when my oldest was born. Enjoy 🙂

    http://mamatayandcolt.blogspot.com/2008/06/killer-bugs.html

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  478. We lived in our first apt w/ our 3 yr old son & newborn daughter…one nite I was up late w/ the baby feeding her sitting on my bed & turned on the light & OMG!! My pat had been over run by water bugs or texas tree roaches which ever they were called! They were crawling up the side of the bassinet, my bed pole, it was AWEFUL!!! I called them in the middle of the nite & made them come exterminate. It was def grounds for an emergency!!!!

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  480. Eww, it is funny to see people killing bugs. I show giant bug to my husband. He took my slipper that I used to wore around the house to kill it. I said hey why use my sandal to kill it and how can I wear it after seeing the dead bug’s blood. He simply nodded. I said Oh no, you should n’t do it again. There are many other things to kiil. You can ask me what other things I have, I said to my husband. Oh my God, why he don’t care what I talk to him. I think it is my turn to kill the bugs with tools like hammer

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  481. I personally hate, loathe and despise any kind of b-u-g-s! Plus I’m allergic to small insect bites. The only funny story I can remember is one time I was in the kitchen, and I didn’t know it right away and this spider came down from the light and decided to land up practically on my nose, and I looked at the bugger cross-eyed and screamed as loud as I could, and I thought I’d have a heart attack, but I think I gave the bug one instead because I found it on the floor afterwards. YUK!

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  482. I one time pulled a spider out from under the couch with my toes – when I realized what it was I beat it to pieces with a rolled up magazine.

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  483. I am sitting here squirming now, because I am certain that there are bugs all over me. I used to feel down the sheets even around the edge of the mattress to check for bugs and snakes every night until I left for college. I have so many stories, but here is a short one that is kind of funny.

    I was visiting my cousin in Florida. She lived on a cul-de-sac, and we were out watching the kids on the grass in the middle of it. All of a sudden I felt the itch of something crawling up my leg. I immediately grabbed at it, but I was wearing jeans. I felt it in there, but there was nothing I could do, so I took off running for the house, trying to trap the bug away from my skin.

    When everyone asked me where I was going, all I could do was scream, “I have to take off my pants!” It was that moment that I looked up and realized that I had run up the driveway of the neighbors’ house, by mistake, and there they were on the front porch looking at me. I was mortified but I didn’t stop to explain. I finally made it to my cousin’s house and dislodged the bug, long dead by that point.

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  484. When I was a young girl, my sisters and I all had really long hair. My Mom used to pull our “pony-tails” so tight, we looked Chinese! Anyway, I digress…once in a while she would wrap those pony-tails into a cute little bun…okay so back in the 60’s it WAS cute! One day as we were enjoying the beautiful spring weather, I saw something fly into my sisters “bun”…I screamed at her that there was a bug in her bun! She thought I was joking…me? joke? HA! So she continued playing when suddenly she said she heard a buzzing sound. She kept turning around to see where it was coming from when she suddenly realized it was coming from her BUN! It was a huge black bumble bee! And it kept trying to burrow itself deeper and deeper into her bun…I honestly think that he thought it was a hive!!! We swatted for almost 15 minutes until it finally flew out…by then, her bun was all disheveled and she looked a mess! To this day (we are now 57 and 59) she has a fear of bees…AND buns!!!! OH how I love my sister!!!

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  485. I have 2 stories that really come to mind… I am truly, deathly afraid of spiders! Everyone that knows me knows this. Well, when I was a little girl, we had the wired electric fence to hold our horses in, one part of the fence only had the top wire, no bottom wire. I was in the field looking for flowers and trying to pick some for my mom, I saw the TINIEST of spiders, I freaked out soo badly, I ran so fast, and just kept looking back making sure the tiny spider (in my mind it was huge!) didnt jump and try to follow me (oh, did I mention that I think EVERY spider in the world jumps! haha) so in all of this running away from the spider, I ran into the wired ELECTRIC fence, and it caught me by my neck! As it caught me by my neck, I got THROWN to the ground and landed on my back with a huge red mark on my neck! So I got shocked, and thrown to the ground all because of a tiny spider that had no intentions at all of hurting me.

    My other story… I was in the Navy, and I was getting off of work one afternoon in the beginning of the “spider season”. I was leaving base, and before I got out of the base, I saw a spider on my door of my car, I was freaking out soo bad! Then it JUMPED… (yes, this one JUMPED) on my LEG!! HAHA, and this point I was beyond freaked, and was worried it was going to jump somewhere where I didnt see it.. I had my daughter in the backseat, and didnt want to get into an accident worried about the stupid spider. So as soon as I left base, I pulled over (yes right at the exit of the base!!) in front of everyone(I didnt care, I had a spider on me!!) I got out of the car, and JUMPED around looking like a little kid freaking out. I was jumping around and waving my arms and stomping my feet, brushing every body part off making sure I didnt see that spider again! haha it was so embarassing, but I didnt noticed until after that everyone was staring at me! Everytime I go into my car, I always check for spiders. If I see a spider in my car, believe me I wont go ANYWHERE until someone has checked and rechecked my car! 🙂

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  487. oh my goodnesssss! I remember this like it was yesterday.. When I was in my teens I used to sleep over my aunts house to help babysit my cousin. One morning I got ready to take a shower, took of my glasses, and hopped in the show. I have long hair so sometimes I know hair is in the drain, just pick it up and toss. Well, when I picked it up it was moving!!!!!! I screamed, woke up the baby, broke the curtains, and managed to fall face first on the floor, just missed the toilet! My aunt came in laughing at first, then saw the HUGE spider and joined me in screaming! Lets just say I always use tissues to pick up hair now.. yikes!

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  488. Three years ago, I was in the Idaho desert. I actually went for two trips a month apart.

    *It’s a long story as to the why and the how I wound up living there for a few days each time.

    The first time it was creepy enough because I was sleeping in a tent. But I figured I had the tent to kind of-sort of protect me. But the second time? Nothing. I had to sleep in my sleeping bag right on the desert floor with no semblance of protection. There was nothing that protected me. It was just me in a sleeping bag in the middle of the desert.

    I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was in my sleeping bag looking up at the desert sky which was lit up with a million and fifty stars and a full moon. It was so beautiful. My thoughts were not so beautiful, though. I laid there wondering what poisonous bug would come and bite me, leave his venom behind and travel off into the moonlit night while I laid there gasping for air. Seriously.

    I was petrified but I had to make a very conscious decision. I decided whatever was going to happen was going to happen. I could not control that. I could only make it worse by not sleeping at all and then still wind up bit or not….it was beyond my control.

    So I said a very earnest prayer that night and had to force myself into slumber. Needless to say it all turned out okay. Not only were there no bugs that came to visit, there were no rattlesnakes that visited me either. And since my son had actually had to behead a rattler earlier in the trip, that was also a very real concern.

    Thanks for letting me relive the beauty of that trip (because that aside, it was beautiful).

    Reply

  489. Ok I just got my 1st house. So I’m washing clothes in my basement. I go down the stairs to put the clothes in the washer while holding the basket of clothes I step on something crunchy! I put the basket down and pick up my foot to see what it was. IT WAS THE BIGGEST BUG WITH WHAT SEEMED LIKE A THOUSAND LEGS!!! RED AND LONG WITH SOME TYPE OF SHELL! (at least 3 inches long) I know its some type of big centipede (more like the grub from the Lion King) I freaked out then it started crawling away between some boxes. I get out the bug spray to kill it and then it crawled up my leg into MY PANTS!!! I FREAKED!!! I was screaming so loud! I started running all around the basement trying to get it out my pants! nothing worked so I took off my pants and ran up stairs!! just then my husband came home from work rushed through the door from my screams and saw my with my pants off! he thought something else was going on! after I told him about it he went to the basement and killed my enemy! Hes my hero! now every time I go to my basement I look before steeping and then run back up the stairs. here is a link to what it looked like. http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.inriodulce.com/images/centipede.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.inriodulce.com/links/badbugs.html&usg=__12Y8C422tW2cNVvstqCfZ9yJGwg=&h=432&w=576&sz=65&hl=en&start=60&zoom=1&tbnid=82IeGF2W7O1dAM:&tbnh=153&tbnw=204&ei=Mz28TfzvE4XUgQetttnDBQ&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcentipede%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1026%26bih%3D658%26gbv%3D2%26tbm%3Disch0%2C2700&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=141&vpy=231&dur=3040&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=157&ty=121&page=6&ndsp=12&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:60&biw=1026&bih=658

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  490. Oh boy, I have many funny bug stories. My most recent was when my children saw not one, but three spiders in the basement. They call me downstairs to “get them”, which is pointless since spiders FREAK me out! Since my husband was at work, I made the quick decision to get one of our 3 cats to try to get them. The cat just ignored the spiders. So, i call to the dog, who I expected would do nothing, but to my surprise she killed (and ate…ick!) all 3 spiders! The kids were thrilled, as was I since I didn’t have to touch the creepy crawleys, but now they call the dog “Sophie the spider eater”.

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  491. Was directed here by Dawn Meehan’s site “Because I Said So”, but have bookmarked this site to visit regularly!

    My bug story:

    Before kids, I was a grade school teacher in an old building where wasps made their nests in the floors or walls or somewhere. They came out every spring. I HATE stinging insects. At the time I was 26 and had never been stung. I feared I’d get stung, have an allergic reaction and die in front of 20 Nine year olds and they’d be scarred for life!! To add to the fear, I had a student that was so allergic that the file said, “call 911 if B. is stung.” GREAT, that just added to the anxiety.

    So, one day I see a wasp struggling around the room (they were slow and acted slightly inebriated when they first crawled out of their hiding place). I told B. to run into the hallway while I stalked and killed the wasp. I cornered it and hit it repeatedly with the fly swatter. Finally one boy said, “Um, Mrs. S. I think the wasp is dead” in this deadpan voice. LOL I’m 38 and still haven’t been stung, so I still have the fear.

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  492. my bug story just happened a week ago…. i’m an avid gardener so i was outside one morning working out in the yard. i’ve been having problems with moles lately (big time pests!) and well when i was out back in my vegetable garden the mole was digging close to my house. as i walked back to the patio to get more garden soil a million termites that were disturbed by the digging mole RUSHED out of the ground and swarmed everywhere! i was running like a lunatic to the waterhose trying to douse myself in water lmaoooo i had to run through the side gate and go in the front door, then come back out the backdoor with…you guessed…raid flying insect spray and i sprayed and sprayed and sprayed lol used an entire can in 15 minutes.

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  493. This happened very recently. My friend and I just moved into a new house (fairly old, but in good condition) which has a full, half-finished basement. A full, half-finished basement that is a perfectly good hiding place for bugs.

    After my friend saw what she thought was a bug amongst her scrapbooking supplies, we decided we definitely had to clean the basement. Armed with brooms (for the poking of piles of things where bugs could be hiding or the flipping over of box tops where bugs could be lurking) and a big can of Raid, we started to clean the basement, one terrifying area at a time. We vetted various boxes, blankets, and pillows, and threw them either onto the couch or onto the bar. We threw things in the garbage, our hearts pounding all the while. We still hadn’t found the bug.

    Finally, we got to the weird rugs over the rug, which the previous tenants had put down. Unfortunately, during the moving-in process, they’d become bunched up and made plenty of little areas for bugs to hide. I started pulling on one of the rugs.

    That’s when it happened.

    A giant bug attacked! It leapt out at me, possibly landed on me, and scurried towards the coffee table, where it stayed out of sight. My friend and I were both screaming, I was on the staircase, and she was on the opposite end of the basement, the bug in between us. I begged her to get the Raid, but she rightly pointed out that the bug was between her and the Raid.

    It was up to me to save the day.

    I grabbed the Raid, breathing rapidly, and sprayed under the table. The worst happened: the evil bug ran up the couch and disappeared under the pile of laptops, pillows, and blankets. I continued to spray Raid, not caring how smelly everything would be afterwards. Thankfully, the bug reappeared, crawled down the couch, where I sprayed it with Raid until it turned white. It moved a few more times. I continued to Raid it, just in case. Finally, it breathed its final breath…or whatever evil centipedes do.

    Of course, then we had to clean it up. I figured that since I slew the beast, my friend had to dispose of it. That’s when we discovered centipede legs move even after they’ve been sprayed with Raid and the rest of the centipede has died.

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  496. I was running after dark one night in early spring. I was running down a stretch of road that had a lot of trees next to the sidewalk. All of a sudden, I felt a SPIDER IN MY MOUTH! My guess is that it had been dangling from the tree right where I was running. So gross.

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  499. My bug story is creepy. I was a jr in high school and found a spider egg nest in my bed. Imagine my horror at seeing lots of baby spiders all over my bed. My best guess is that it fell from the ceiling and landed on my bed. The eggs had hatched and there were spiders every where. Needless to say I was freaked out and did not sleep in my bed for a week. And I replaced the sheets and blanket. I hate spiders!

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  500. On my second day of work at my new job last year, I was shelving some books in the dark, creepy basement. I was also feeling kind of ill, like I was about to hurl, but I’d had to come into work anyway in order to keep my job. Needless to say, I wasn’t in a good mood and I was hoping that the day would be quiet and uneventful. All of a sudden, I saw a GIGANTIC centipede – 2 inches long with thousands of legs that were all moving at the speed of light…right towards me.

    Now, here’s the worst part. Because I work in a library, I wasn’t allowed to shriek and run away. Insects are considered an active threat to the books, and protocol demanded that I kill the bug, then pick it up and show it to my supervisor (does anyone else find that weird? Yeah, me too). I gingerly stepped on it and it made a squishy noise (EWWW) but it just wouldn’t die. It wriggled around, half flattened and icky with many of it’s legs writhing. I nearly puked. When it was finally over, I picked it up, then put it on a piece of paper to show my boss, who told me to take it to the operations manager.

    By then, I had realized the potential humorous possibilities of the situation. I put the enormous bug on the keyboard of the manager’s desk with a note that said “Happy Monday!”, then snuck around the corner to hide. When the manager came in, I heard him say “What the @##@$?!??!” and he started cursing loudly. I gained quite a reputation that day.

    Amazingly, I still have that job!

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  503. I have 4 little girls and one of them is pretty terrified of bugs. She’s 3 (we’ll call her H). My oldest (E), who is 4, really wanted her turn on the bike her sister was riding. E kept pestering H to get off the bike, but it wasn’t working. Suddenly I see H jump off the bike so fast and start a terrified cry. Aparently E had told her there was a spider by the bike so she could get on it! Holy cow, is she old enough for that sort of thing already?? Her manipulation definitely worked, but not with Mom around. Good try, E.

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  506. I’m ashamed to share this one, but none the less my husband did laugh when I told him about it.
    I had to help set up at our local community center for my sons Cub Scout banquet. I watch my neighbors 2 kids and took them with me and my youngest son. We get to the community center and set up and stay fairly busy. My neighbors daughter tells me she needs to go potty. She is 5. So, I lead the way to the bathroom. Mind you we are the only ones in the building and it is at night. I have to find all the lights just to get to the bathroom. We get in there she uses it and we step to the sinks to wash our hands. I walk over to get us some paper towels. I dry my hands and she says, “Ms Kelly look at that bug.” I look over and there on the side of the row of sinks is the biggest cockroach I have seen in a long time. I scream and go running for the door unaware in my mind set that I have just stranded her. I say, “come on just run.” She shakes her head. I panic because I do not want to go back towards that bug. I start jumping while I try to figure out how to get her to my side of the bathroom with out returning to hers. I tell her again, “Run really fast it won’t get you.” She starts to run and then stops. I again say, “OK this time run really fast. You can do it. I promise it won’t get you.” Mean while the nasty roach is still crawling around the side of the sink. “On the count of 3, ready…” Finally she makes a made dash for me and I am so thankful that I did not have to return to retrieve her. To this day I chuckle thinking about this story and then I feel guilty and then I chuckle. I to this day have never told her mom, my neighbor and friend. 😀

    KElly

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  508. One night, my husband (aka The Man) and I were lying in bed, when we heard a high pitched weird noise. I knew it had to be something horrible. Normal things *do not* make noises like that. For the record, The Man thought it was our computer. Why? I don’t know. Our computer didn’t make noises like that.

    After a few minutes of convincing him, The Man turned on the lights, only to see some sort of freakish mutant bug perched on the door trim. SEE?!

    I ran past him, out of the room, leaving my glasses behind. The creepy invader flew into our bathroom. Then I had no chance of seeing, since my glasses were IN the bathroom. I was all Velma, Scooby Doo style. The Man was clearly on deck here.

    He didn’t want to get the bug. I yelled at him. “You’re in the bloody (I always feel British slang makes things fancy) military! You’re trained for this!” Granted, they don’t really train to capture hideous nightmare bugs, but I was legally blind and a girl. Plus? I have a bug phobia. I’ve literally almost capsized boats trying to avoid bees.

    After fashioning a trap out of a tupperware case and lid, The Man went in to do battle with the monster. He emerged, with the awful thing buzzing and screeching. It was, allegedly, a katydid. Or, as I prefer, an alien scout, checking on the poor Earthlings before the invasion.

    The Man opened our back door and walked out on the deck, preparing to flip the Katydid into the night. I told him not to flip it. I told him to set the tupperware down and it could climb out if he left the lid ajar. Did he listen? No. He flipped it. Did I mention he was wearing boxers? This is relevant, trust me.

    So, the terrifying death-bug didn’t just rejoice at freedom and fly off into the night sky. No, it zipped around and flew up The Man’s boxer shorts. The Man danced around, squealing, alternately smacking at his own crotch. I, being a loving wife, slammed the door shut. He yelled for me to open it.

    “Not while that thing is in your pants!” I yelled back, cackling madly at the double entendre AND the dancing/smacking husband.

    Finally, to everyone’s relief, the horror show of an insect flew back OUT of his boxers, and once I was sure he was REALLY gone, I opened the door.

    The Man wasn’t very happy. It’s still my favorite bug story, oddly enough.

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  509. I’ve got two fabulous stories, no wait, three. Hmm…..I shall go with the first one but the word “bug” is loosely used…usually “bug” is synonymous with spiders and spiders of any size count, right? Okay, so my parents had a white poodle. I think it’s fairly common knowledge that small white dogs aren’t usually the brightest and Cricket was not bright. Just a tail-wagging dog happy that you bestowed attention on her. So my stepmom was working at home and the computer table was in their bedroom. She was plodding away and she heard one of the dogs enter the room. She glanced down to see a tarantula atop Cricket’s head and the dog was just smiling at her and tail a-waggin. She screams and jumps up, promptly freaking the dumb dog out, who ran under their bed. And promptly came back out with no tarantula. She slams the door shut and watches the crack under the door until my dad gets home. He searches their room, turns the bed upside down, moves dressers and no tarantula. I’m pretty sure he thought she was exaggerating and that it was really a minor fiddleback or something. No giant spider to be found anywhere. SO THEY WENT ON WITH THEIR LIVES in the house. THEY SLEPT IN THEIR ROOM. Which, I’m sorry, I’d have moved out without any of my things, because hello? So about 4 days later, my parents are in the kitchen and my stepbro glances down the hall and nonchalantly says “wow, that’s a big spider coming out of your room.” And there it was…just waltzing out of their BEDROOM WHERE THEY HAD SLEPT FOR THE PAST 4 DAYS, as if it was done with vacation. My dad slammed a mixing bowl over it and put a few books on top. And called someone to come get it. Ugh, gah, I have to go get my shoes now.

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  511. Heh heh, the worst time was when my gal and I took off to visit San Diego for a short little vacation and we had made sure to dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s, and basically make sure everything was in order before we left. Unbeknownst to us, we had, um.. forgotten one or two things. When we got back, we walked in the door, turned on the living room lights; no problem. We went to go put our stuff away and she went to wash her face and use the restroom. She turned on the light in there, and there were about 20 cockroaches piled up on a spilled soda bottle that we had forgotten had been left in there. Needless to say, it was an interesting night of extermination and decontamination 😉

    Please feel free to contact me at – allrightyes at gmail dot com

    Reply

  513. Here is my bug story….
    I moved to nc from co two years ago. For those of you that have been to the south you know bugs thrive down here. Well, my husband was away at a military school so I had to close on our house and move us in by myself. My first day at the house, with no furniture or anything I may add – just me and my son, I started seeing the awful dreaded cockroaches. I started killing them and told myself that I would call the bug people the next day. Well, I went into the bathroom and that’s when o saw it. This crazy looking, long legged bug. I didn’t know what it was but I told myself I could do it, kill it I mean. I moved towards it with shoe in hand and that’s when it jumped towards me. I screamed and ran. I immediately called the bug people and explained in a crazy person tone that I needed them now bc of this crazy bug. They finally understood the emergency and came over after I told them I would pay extra. Lol. The name of the bug is a camel cricket to anyone that wants to look it up.

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  514. here is my bug story that I now think is funny…. I was driving down the road with my two kids in the backseat and as I turned to go down the road from a red light…a spider came down on his web from nowhere and landed on my NOSE!!!! Now since you dont know me I am completely terrified of spiders! I decided to hit the spider off of my face and as I did I must have pulled the steering wheel because I than promptly hit a fence and did 5,000 dollars worth of damage to my car but of course the kids and I were fine! I now check around the car for spiders before I get in and that was over a year ago!!! LOL I also will never live this one down. At every family gathering it is …..remember the time Melissa hit the fence because of a spider?? UGH!!! 🙂

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  517. My bug story is a Christmas bug story. We have always lived in apartments and never had a real tree. One year we decided to get a real tree. Oh it was wonderful, the smell of pine, it was so christmasy. The one morning I noticed all these little flies, teeny little flies EVERYWHERE. All over the walls and windows. After freaking out and enlisting hubby’s help we killed them all. Until we went to take the tree down and all of a sudden we had thousands of them again!! Apparently they were hibernating in the tree, as it warmed up the first load came out and when we took it down the rest of them came flying out it it like some crazy bug horror movie. We had to wash the walls and windows because although blood is is red and christmasy, smears of dead bug blood on my walls did not add to the decor. Needless to say we stick with artificial trees since!

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  518. This past summer while driving my daughter to a Doctors appointments she starts hysterically panicking in the back seat. I finally turned around when she unbuckeled her seat belt and reached for the door while in motion. “what are you doing” I yelled at her “there’s a huge spider and it’s crawling on me she was crying. I pulled over the car and we got out to investigate sure enough there was a HUUUUGGGEEEE SPIDER but it was still in her hair which insued her running away. Finally after catchignher and killing it she still refused to get in the car she had to ride in the front seat to that appointment and home. Nice right lol…sasha

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  519. It was the spring of 1990 and I have been having labor pains for about 4 hours. I decided to shower and then wake my husband and told him he needed to get ready it was the time we had waited for. I went downstairs with my bag and decided to tidy up the house while waiting. I flipped the light in the kitchen and low and behold a stinky cockroach went under my fridge. Well no mother is going to leave a house with a two year old with a cockroach. ( I knew there were several but until I would see them, they could stay) This was no ordinary roach, we were living in Hawaii out by the sugar cane fields. These roaches averaged 4 inches in length. Try as I might the roach was just out of my roach was just out of my reach, belly and all. There was only one solution, move that fridge. And so I did, it was on, it was me or the roach and frankly at 9 months, I knew I had him on size. I moved the fridge some, he went deeper., I moved it out and here he came, I missed. He went for cover one last time so I moved the fridge back and he had no where to go, he was mine. I was the queen of killing fast roaches. My husband came down just as I was moving the fridge in place and he asked what in the world I thought I was doing moving the fridge, after I explained the story, he rolled his eyes and said to remind him the next time we got in a fight to surrender, there was no way to win when I was determined.

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  520. One day at work I was walking down the hall towards my office and a female co-worker was in front of me. She saw a big cockroach on the floor coming towards her. She turned around and just about climbed over me to get away from it.

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  521. I was living in Japan, and my husband was out to sea. It was the middle of the night, and I couldn’t sleep, so I was cleaning my house. I walked into the living room and on my wall was the biggest centipede I had ever seen (Okay, I had never seen a one before), it was at least 8 inches long. I started screaming and freaking out, so I called my Dad back in the states to ask what to do. He tells me just to smoosh it with a paper towel. NO WAY am I going to get anywhere near that bug. So finally he tells me I can vacuum it up. Great plan, I have a brand new vacuum with a long hose attachment. He gets sucked up like a charm. But then I realize I have a giant centipede living in my brand new vacuum. So I ride the elevator down (I must have been quite a site in my cleaning clothes in the middle of the night holding a vacuum canister as far away from myself as I can). I go out into the courtyard and open the lid to release him and I shake it out, but he isn’t in there. I’m looking around for him, maybe he jumped out when I took the lid off. Finally I find him, he is on the lid I’m holding, nearly touching my hand. I scream a blood curdling scream, throw the canister as far as I can and run back up to my apartment. Later the next day I went down and had to find my vacuum parts, but luckily there was no sign of the giant gross bug. To this day I still shudder when I think of that centipede.

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  523. When I was about 14 we went camping to British Columbia and after days of travelling on a forestry road we stopped at a campsite and of course they just had outhouses, we had arrived at around 10pm so my Mom, sister and I went together to the out house with a flashligh and next to it was a young guy camping all by himself so I was kind of watching him and my Mom said shine the flashlight in here and as Iooked up I seen a spider that looked like a black widow and was about the same size and because of the light he started moving down at first my Mom thought I was joking but when she looked up and seen it she ran out of the outhouse with her pants down right where the young guy was camping!! He caught it and gave it to the ranger who confirmed that’s what it was!! He said someone probably dumped it there. No more outhouses for us and we made my Dad move at 2am he was not happy!

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  525. Last summer I jumped in the car to drive down to the corner to get a couple of Slurpee’s for the kids. I barely got to the corner when I swear I felt something on my head. I brushed my head and the feeling went a way when I leaned to the side and grabbed my purse and sat back there was the biggest ugliest spider coming down right in front of my face. Almost landed on my nose!!!
    I swatted it and it landed on the steering wheel and tried to run around it… Mind you I’m driving the car. I slammed on the breaks and it flew to the window. I grabbed the closest thing I could find…. my Money and I slammed it against the windshield. Now I got spider guts all over my $. I went inside and put it on the counter and mentioned the story briefly to the man behind the counter as he laughed while I told it. He picked up the money and pretended to lick it. Yes you can say it…. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Thankfully he took my money and I bought slurpee’s but I didn’t drive home until I inspected the car.

    Does anyone know if raid has anything for spiders in a car??!! we get them a lot here.

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  526. On the happy family vacation we took annually to the Californian Sequoias : Our tradition before we leave is to always visit the creek to collect rocks and objects to remember the trip!

    I was only 4 years old excited to find a good rock. So I happily dunk my hand into one of the creek’s deep puddles grasping onto a handful of “rocks”. A scream soon followed because not only had I disturbed a giant black creature’s dwellings but it looks as if all his bug-friends & family ended up in my grasped hand!! It quickly became apparent that the twigs, floating black things in the puddles were bugs and spiders all around me. I cried and cried as I realized nature is a horrible place.

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  527. I remember being at my sister’s house many years ago and getting several years taken off of my life thanks to a frightening creepy creature. My family and I were watching television when one of us spotted a nasty looking spider near the front door. My brother-in-law, who is always up for a quick game of stomp and drag in the presence of an arachnid, grabs his sandal and closes in on his unsuspecting (or so he thinks) prey. He says to my sister and me, “Come look at this thing! I’ve never seen a spider this big!”, and for some reason, in a moment of insanity, we actually get up to go look at the spider. I know it sounds crazy, but this is true: that spider jumps straight up in the air from the floor like it is trying to attack! My sister and I scream and scare my young niece half to death as we leap onto the couch and cower. The spider is jumping toward my brother-in-law, who has dropped his sandal and is trying to bat the spider out of the air with a hat. The spider continues to leap, my sister and I continue to scream. Finally my brother-in-law traps the creature under the hat, and with eyes as big as saucers, he dispatches the attack spider. This happened over ten years ago, and we still shudder when we talk about that strange, hopping spider from hell that even scared my brother-in-law, a military veteran who saw war time!

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  528. I was about 10 years old and I remembering being in my Grandpartents driveway. We were getting ready to go home after a visit. It always took forever to actually leave because my Grandmother and my mom always had to get one more thing, or say one more thing and them someone had to go to the bathroom and so on. I was sitting in our big read truck and I decided I wanted some gum. I grabbed a stick of gum without looking at it (it was Juicy Fruit), took off the wrapper and popped it in my mouth. I took the first chew and it was bitter and my tongue started to feeling like it was on fire. I yelled and as I opened my mouth my sister screamed that my mouth was full of ants. I freaked out and tried spitting them out as they bit my tongue. Of course all of the grownups came running outside. My Grandma and mother started laughing once they figured out I was fine. To this day I can still taste those ants and I check my food all the timw to make sure I don’t eat any bugs.

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  530. One time I sittin outside mind my own business when I see a big spider drop by my head. I start screamin and jumpin up. I think I’ve gotten away from it when My sister yells its on you. At that point I was ready to rip my own boddy parts off to get that thing off me. I’m running and screaming like a crazy lady trying to get that thing off me. I watch very carfully now when sitting outside.

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  534. My mom FINALLY worked up the courage to kill a Daddy long legs spider. Well, daddy was a mommy cuz when she hit it with her shoe, hundreds of lil babies went running out all over. SMy mom lost it! I had to run, get the bug spray and kill them all while she breathe into a brown paper bag.

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  535. Okay, so years ago when my ex and I were still together we lived in a really crappy part of town in the cheapest rental we could find, in SOUTH FLORIDA. So, as you can imagine, all sorts of bugs were continually breeding and waltzing in and out of our apartment. We had a horrible problem in particular with roaches…. One night, my ex is in the recliner and I am sitting across from him watching TV in the dark after the kids were asleep. I see a roach on his shoulder.
    “Honey!” I say “theres a freaking roach on your shoulder!”
    He freaks and reaches for it and IT RUNS INTO HIS EAR! My ex was in a complete panic! he could hear it scritching and feel it wiggling but we couldn’t get it out. My ex bangs his head, shakes it, gets in the shower to fill his ear with water and try to flush it out. Then he tries a q-tip but tha only pushes the thing against his eardrum and causes intense pain. So my e is standing there with a COCKROACH in his ear canal, smushed up against his ear drum wiggling its antennae and legs trying to get out. My ex says lets try to smoke him out. So, I sit there, blowing cigarette smoke into his ear which actually DID kill the roach …. we had to go to the ER to get the roach out… turns out, it was stuck in a hunk of ear wax in his ear.

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  536. reading all the stories has caused a bad case of the creepy crawlies. ewwwww
    okay I actually have two stories that have forever traumatized me from EVER liking bugs or spiders.
    My first one: We were living in Tennessee when I was about 7, we were in a single wide trailer in a wooded area. The family was sitting around watching a program on tv and my sister got up to go down the hall to the bathroom. She had just started down the hall when she comes running back in a panic. Once dad calmed her down a little, we were able to get out of her that there was a HUGE spider with 20 legs crawling up the wall. Me being the big sister told her I would go get it out of the house ( I was not scared of spiders then). so I head down the hall and see where this HUGE spider with what looked like 20 legs were crawling up the wall. I swear, it was the size of my fist. It was going very slowly up the wall. I swear it turned and looked at me. I backed up and screamed. I went back to the living room told them it was as big as my hand and it had hair all over it, my mom let out a big sigh and said “now girls, its just a spider, we’ve seen them before” I kid you not, she saw this spider and yelled for my dad. I think my dad was even worried by now that this might be something else he needed to worry about. He headed down the hall with a mason jar, and I remember crying that he needed to stay with me, that the spider might eat him.
    I heard him say “holy crap, what the hell is that?” my little sister is hysterical and saying that she is moving away from here. My dad goes outside to the shed and walks back in with spider killer spray, He must have sprayed half the can on this thing. it would hit the ground and start back up the wall. after 4 attempts, dad goes back to the mason jar and manages to scope it into the jar and takes it outside. I followed to make sure this thing didnt eat him I’m sure, or maybe it was morbid curiosity. He dumps it out of the jar and picks up a rock that he needs two hands to pick up. He drops it on this spider. the rock started to move. This thing would not die. My dad finally put it back in the mason jar and took it down to the river and let it float away on a stick .
    we have NO idea what kind of spider it was, it was big, it was hairy, and it was a determined bugger that it was NOT going to die. I think of that thing everytime I see a spider. I dont do well with them, I will let anyone else get spiders out of my house.

    My second experience was oddly enough, in Tennessee as well. I was older,about 11 now. As a family, we go camping every year, sometimes frequently. We went to one of our favorite places in Tennessee. My sisters and I were sleeping in the tent outside of our camper (just like we always did). My sister woke up crying, and I asked her what was wrong. she told me something bit her. I grabbed the flashlight to see what it could be. I freaked out on her when crawling all over her pillow were TICKS, thousands of them. she pointed to my pillow and I could see the same thing. By now, my parents were awake, they could hear us squealing. as they were unzipping the tent to see what was wrong, I noticed a ticklet underneath my waist long hair. My mom was the first to see that my neck line was crawling in ticks. I was yanked out of the tent, as were my sisters. The three of us were soaked down by a hose at 11pm to try to get these ticks off of us. were were then taken into the small camper and physically checked for additional ticks that may have burrowed into the skin. I was the only one with ticks that had taken hold. we packed up that night (threw out the tent and bedding inside) and went home, there was not going to be any sleeping outside for years. I WILL NOT sleep on the ground since that night. I have to be up on a cot at the very least. I was never so glad to move from that state to a climate that doesnt have ticks

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