“Icky creatures.”

Humans are pretty icky, too. We just cover it up (clothes, deodorants) and sent it away (toilets). Our social world is constructed and we send the real world to the great beyond (cf. Zizek).

“bizarre mating rituals of bees”

Bizarre. Everything different from us is “bizarre”?

“Watch Isabella Rossellini act out the bizarre mating rituals of bees, spiders, and limpets in Green Porno.”

Wow. That’s one bizarre video. It’s the video that is bizarre, not the animals. A transvestite Mr. Rogers teaches animal sex-ed by donning strap-on penises and subversively transmuting animal instincts into psychologically-motivated human sex acts. Perverse. A nightmare. ‘Alice In Sex-Ed Class.’

I’m a big fan of slugs and snails, myself. They’re fascinating in their ickyness! http://www.flickr.com/photos/58353362@N00/sets/72157601475762918/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58353362@N00/sets/72157607221248760/

I always take a moment to talk to turkey vultures I meet at nature centers, zoos, and sanctuaries. They almost always hop closer, and at the very least give me their undivided attention when I talk softly to them, telling them what handsome vultures they are… their habits may be objectionable, but if you look into their eyes, you see an intelligent being in there who appreciates social contact.

But then, I keep pet rats, and many people find THEM icky, too.

Some of the things that we find pretty cute can be icky too. One summer I was camping in Central Oregon at Lake Hosmer when I saw a family of ducks. The mother had about 10 ducklings and they were all swimming in a nice line. But then about 4 otters came out of no where and just destroyed these ducklings. In the end there was only one duckling left.

So cute can also be icky.

At the moment, my adorable Pembroke Welsh Corgi is giving my equally adorable Cornish Rex cat a thorough ear-washing; Rexes tend to build up large quantities of sticky, icky ear wax in their ears which doting owners must clear out weekly. Thanks to my canine Q-Tip not minding animal ickiness, my job is much, much easier! (See – even our pets can be icky sometimes – Riley, the Corgi, also does rear ends and other areas. And then, of course, it makes me go ICK when he wants to kiss me!)

With all the rain I have an explosion of slugs in my garden and they are devouring certain plants: lupines, delphinium chrysanthemum, marigold…. I could go on. So I have been picking them off and variously throwing them into the woods, trapping them with a jar cover filled with beer, collecting and killing them ( I won’t tell you how)- my patience and good will has worn out.

But I have to say I leaned something amazing about them. They exude a slime trail which you can easily see but the reason they do so well in wet weather is that this substance gets even more slippery with water. If I pick them with my bare hands it is very difficult to wash the gooey stuff off with soap, detergent, anything I have tried. Eventually I do wipe it off– but that’s icky!

I have several icky creature stories, and they evoke memories of family. I like to read about these icky creatures, but not to have them in my house!

I’m sure I traumatized my sons years ago when I took them outside to watch worms mating. They “snuggled,” band-to-band, exchanging genetic information, for hours! The boys just rolled their eyes.

Another time I was driving my ailing father on a rural road in New York State, when his sharp eyes spotted a flock of turkey vultures dining upon a carcass of a deer. “Let’s stop and watch them,” the old farm boy said in glee. And so we did.

And speaking of Dad, he taught me a lesson when I was a kid. I had left an open can of cat food in the basement in muggy Northern Virginia. It sprouted an overflow of maggots and sure enough, Dad made me clean it up! Since then, I try to clean up as I go along

Hey!
you have to take vultures off the icky list!!!! that’s my favorite bird, and what I want to come back as in my next life. Just to be able to fly/soar that effortlessly. their sense of smell is incredible, we can’t even comprehend what that would be like. and yes, they eat dead stuff. so do lobsters & crabs. To them it’s probably Filet Mignon!

NO problem with slugs, snakes, jellyfish and such, but WHAT good are TICKS??? As to ,mosquitoes, well bats and mosquuitoes other predators can damn well find something else to eat!

A friend and I cycles from Alaska to Argentina and we picked up these bugs in Paraguay or Argentina. I’m not sure what they were and I’m hoping your guests can help me. The first sign that there was something wrong was when we started feeling like we had hangnails on most of our fingers, and some of our toes. After about 2-4 days she noticed that they were not hang nails, but that there was actually a small hole where the pain/swelling was. So we pulled over, heated our tweezers and Swiss army knife, and stared digging in one of the opening. It hurt like crazy, but we really wanted to find out what was causing the pain. To our dismay, we found these white gooey sacs, with tens of little black dots in the sacs. They looked like bugs, so we dug in ALL of them and got everything out. I can’t say it felt good, but it was a relief to have then out of our bodies.

We later asked about what they might have been, we were told they were some type of spider, but we never really got a straight answer as the people telling us were laughing so hard.

What a fun show…

I still haven’t heard what good ticks are for… Of course they must play some role in the food chain, but is it an integral one? If all ticks were eradicated, would the ecosystem crumble?

Regarding the caller that described the ground moving with millipedes : perhaps they were Hellgrammites, which are the larvae of the Dobson Fly.

Three friends and I were camping on the Housatonic River (Connecticut) at the end of May and there was a particularly large emergence from the river the first night we were there.

None of us had ever seen them and were astonished at how utterly creepy they were! Black with huge pincers, millipede-like sectioned body. There were loads of them! Perhaps these weren’t what the caller and her crew of kids saw but it reminded me of our encounter. Gives me the willies every time I think of it!

I don’t have a link but if you do an Image search for “Hellgrammite” – you won’t be disappointed.

The nastiest has to be chiggers. I ran into what had to be a nest of them last week. I am still suffering this week with blisters from the little critters

Tom –
Terrific Show!

20 years ago I was grouse hunting in the ‘flats” of the famous As Sable River near Luzerne MI. Mid-step over a large log, I heard a very scary guttural hiss on the ground. I ‘froze’ with one foot on the ground, the other on the log and a large Hog Snake aimed at my crotch! I was carrying a .20 gauge double barreled shotgun, but using that on the snake at that particular position was not a good choice. I worked up the courage to slowly step off the log and pivoted away from the beast with my right foot… Once my heart stopped pounding like a cannon, I watched the snake for 15 minutes…it settled down and went back to sunning itself in the grass near the log. I continued the hunt and purposefully walked around two windfalls rather than step over them.

PS: MSU’s Rich Merritt is a terrific person, naturalist, author…thanks for including him on your show.

Silverfish and Earwigs! Interesting creatures but undoubtedly the grossest in my humble opinion.

There are lots of icky creatures in Central America, but the ickiest I saw was the large (about 4-5′ diameter incl. legs) scavenger crab at the bottom of the privy I wanted to use.

minor correction, referring to the beginning of the show:

Birds don’t have vocal cords; their sound-producing organ (?) is called a syrinx, as I remember, and its acoustics is apparently very different from that of a larynx,

It’s an intriguing show; thanks much!

[nb]

RE: SWARMING CREATURES

This is the time of year, bees may elect to swarm, their process of splitting a healthy colony into two viable colonies during healthy flows of nectar and pollen availability. With the exception of Africanized honey bees living in the southern states, there are practically no wild honey bee colonies in existence in the US due to parasitic mites.

A swarm of 30,000 leaves their old colony (and their caring beekeeper) before locating a new home and may hold up for a day or two in a nearby tree, or house eave as a cluster about the size of a soccer ball until scouts locate and communicate the location of a new home.

PLEASE resist the urge to kill such a swarm as the honey engorged bees pose no threat to humans or pets, as they are not defensive without a home or brood. The cluster will move on, and hopefully survive the winter, adopting to life in the wild.

Your state agricultural extension station can supply a list of registered beekeepers in your area who will be more than happy to add to their colonies, or recapture one of their own!

I live in south west Florida and we are always dealing with wild life invasions.

Snakes that somehow get into our lanai have been our most recent problem; so much so that my wife insists that we keep the doors closed most of the time. I know the snake in question is harmless.

Last year our neighbor went to pick up a black belt under her bed only to find that the belt rapidly moved out of reach.

I have tried not to raise my girls with fears of bugs and other creatures. In the process, I have learned to let go of my own fears and misconceptions. My 6 year old asks lots of questions and I have to the do the reading to find answers for her, so I am learning many fascinating things.

Anyone have a suggestion for a book that would be appropriate for a budding 6 year old entomologist?

Kids do not have the same repulsion to slugs that adults have:

http://www.facebook.com/knmercer?ref=name#/photo.php?pid=121644&id=1020621236

Love this show of icky creatures. I had a close encounter of an oral kind involving a bat. I was high up on a ladder replacing some siding on the south (sunny) side of our house. When I pried up one of the boards, a small sleeping bat was rudely awakened by me. Since it was very bright, it flew to the darkest refuge it could find which was my startled mouth. I quickly spit the bat out. I am certain that he was much more revolted than I was.

Could have used more creatures and less guilt about feeling creeped out by them.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175602

Under the Vulture Tree – by David Bottoms

As a child, my mother’s uncle used to tell me that if you looked up at a vulture (he called them “buzzards”) as it was flying over you, it would vomit on you. He is about 70 years old and grew up on a farm in rural Kentucky. Any idea if this old farmer’s tale somehow came from experiences of farmers trying to shoot at vultures and then causing the animal to vomit due to stress?

Here’s a fun link to ten of the most diabolical insects on earth. Check out the Titan Beetle which has to be about the size of a hamster.

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/10-most-diabolical-insects/11139

Great program. Suggest you look up “Exploding Ants, Amazing Facts About How Animals Adapt” a book for children by Joanne Settel PhD that helps put some of these icky critters and practices in perspective.

I tried (after the show was over) to send this to Dr. Harding but did not succeed. Can you forward this?

I have a place in the Ozarks. One day an eastern hognose snake appeared by the cabin. I wanted to demonstrate to my wife their behavior of feigning death. I disturbed the snake until it went into its death roll, but in the process it vomited up a gooey blob. I thought I recognized what had been eaten/swallowed. After soaking and cleaning the blob in water it became obvious that an American toad was the victim. It was then, a moment or so later,that the victim came back from the dead, as it were. Before long this toad began breathing, moving, sitting upright, and finally began looking for an exit. We named him LUCKY.

Count me in as a hellbender lover!! Hellbenders were discussed in the show by a caller. They are a large aquatic salamander, but not a newt (though a newt is a type of salamander). Here’s a web page dedicated to the charismatic, misunderstood hellbender: http://www.hellbenders.org/

Thanks for this show. I really enjoyed the songs you picked to go with it. Please update with the names of the songs and the artists.

Here are the songs we played during the show:

SLUG (The Ramones)
Fascinating Creatures (Francis England)
All God’s Critters (Peter, Paul and Mary)

- Producer Pien