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Silver Card Talk Member |
I am expectant that it will happen one day. Wolfie: I'm sure you pine every day at my absence from this board. You can admit it, you big pus-sy cat... | |||
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| Silver Card Talk Member |
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NSU Writer |
Jeff, that's amazing. This would make a good subject for a horror film. | |||
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Diamond Card Talk Member |
We may have to change this thread to something more current since news of the Killer Ants has died down. How about Killer Bedbugs!  I kid you not, bedbugs have been all the rage in NYC this summer and fall. People have found them in fancy hotels, movie theaters, department stores, schools, etc. You would think that a bedbug would need a bed, but apparently not.  People are actually staying away from the movies because they don't want to bring any of the critters home. As if there wasn't enough to worry about.  | |||
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Diamond Card Talk Member |
Raven  ____________________ Bernie... "nuff said" "it traps,it kills,it eats....that's what a good spider does" Alice Cooper | |||
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| Diamond Card Talk Member |
Had to laugh when I read the headline stories on CBS News this morning . . . "Crazy, hairy, biting ants sweep the south" Yes, the killer ants are still going strong, and I quote (edited): "The flea-sized critters are called crazy because each forager scrambles randomly at a speed that your average picnic ant, marching one by one, reaches only in video fast-forward. They're called hairy because of the fuzz that, to the naked eye, makes their abdomens look less glossy than those of their slower, bigger cousins. And they're on the move in Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisana. In Texas, they've invaded homes and industrial complexes, urban areas and rural areas. They travel in cargo containers, hay bales, potted plants, motorcycles and moving vans. They overwhelm beehives - one Texas beekeeper was losing 100 a year in 2009. They short out industrial equipment. If one gets electrcuted, its death releases a chemical cue to attack to the colony . . . The other ants rush in. Before long, you have a ball of ants. They will eat just about anything - plant or animal. Texas has temporarily approved two chemicals in its effort to control the ants, and other states are looking at ways to curb their spread. The hairy ants do wipe out one pest - fire ants - but that's cold comfort." The mosquitoes that are thriving in my backyard from all the swampy weather don't look so bad now. At least they don't organize. | |||
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Bronze Card Talk Member |
As a Brit who only even a saw fire ants (?) once in Florida, it's funny to see the hype /hysteria around ants in the USA.  | |||
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| Diamond Card Talk Member |
I remembered this very old thread while I was listening to the panicked reports about the deadly giant Asian hornet, lovingly known as the "murder hornet', that has cropped up in Washington State. Then I saw a youtube video of some fool in the "sting zone" who apparently makes his living going around the world and filming insects biting his arm. Now there is an occupation. The guy looks like he thinks he's Indiana Jones looking for big bugs instead of the lost arc. It was a hoot. Anyway, the Asian "murder hornet" is impressive and I think I'd rather run into a killer ant. It kills other insects, mainly bees, by ripping their heads off and feeding them to their children. Very nice and very bad for our bee population, which is already down. It's huge, orange striped with crazy eyes. Oh, and its venom is poisonous enough to kill people if you are stung multiple times. It would not be so funny if these hornets take hold in the US, so I'm hoping the stories are being overblown, but I fear not. About a dozen years ago we saw the first Asian roach in my neighbor. Just 2 or 3 in the summer. Then every summer we saw more of them. Now I already have the traps ready. As water bugs they come out of the sewers and drains and get in the houses easily. They are big suckers and they can fly. The big American roach can not. Anyway that's the latest update from the killer insect world. Maybe COVID-19 will kill them. I'm waiting for the swarms of locust and the rivers turning red.  | |||
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| Gold Card Talk Member |
It's okay, Raven, all you need is one of those electric shock, tennis racket-shaped, fly-swatters you can get at Harbor Freight for $3 although they don't seem to deliver the amps they used to. There is at least one species of ant-decapitating fly out there to help with the fire ants and then there are those people pouring molten aluminum down an anthill entrance to create a cast of the tunnels the ants make. They call it art at that point and try to sell them. Yeah, you have to be careful where you sit on the ground in Florida. A few years ago and after a good rain, while getting a burrito in Gainesville (RIP Burrito Brothers), I saw a dead predaceous diving beetle in the gutter. It lives in ponds hunting other aquatic invertebrates but the bigger ones try to catch fish and tadpoles and this was a bigger one. I didn't have a container or I would have collected it for a friend who's an entomologist. In California the latest insect seems to be a species of large ant - clearly larger than normal black ants. Jess
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| NSU Writer |
Ah, the old Killer Ant thread. We had a lot of fun with this one a few years ago. Now we have the Murder Hornet, something we had never heard of before. Makes you wonder what else is out there lurking to kill us, Reaper Roaches, Fatal Fleas, Mortal Moths or Anihilation Aphids. Looks like we have the makings of a great set of cards from Monsterwax... just sayin'. | |||
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| Diamond Card Talk Member |
Don't hear much about the Asian "Murder Hornet" anymore. What happened to them? It wasn't the end of civilization? New York City is being attacked by the Spotted Lanternfly now, who are actually quite pretty. They can infest and eat the plants and trees, so we are supposed to stomp on them at sight. I can think of a lot of other people I'd stomp on first, if I could. The Lanternflies don't even make my list.  | |||
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| Silver Card Talk Member |
It makes me  every time I get a notification on this thread. It's a classic. And one I hope continues to endure. | |||
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| NSU Writer |
BCW, how you doing? You were the creator of this thread, I believe. I too am always happy to see a new post here. | |||
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| Gold Card Talk Member |
Last month in the New York Times, there was an article about the murder hornet. The Entomological Society of America has changed the common name to "Northern giant hornet" though regular people are going to keep calling it the murder hornet because it sounds cooler. Yeah, I saw a story on those spotted lanternflies on the Today show. You can feed those spotted lanternflies to your praying mantis or Venus Flytrap. It looked like you can scoop up a bunch of them in one sweep of the hand.
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| Diamond Card Talk Member |
I haven't seen a Praying Mantis around here in more than 5 years. I think all the spraying for West Nile virus and the Long-Horned Beetles has killed everything except the mosquitos and the beetles that are the targets. It's a shame how many insects like bees, butterflies, crickets, grasshoppers, ladybugs, etc. have just disappeared here to the point that you may see only a handful of them over the whole Summer. Only the rats and roaches are thriving in NYC. If the Spotted Lanternflies were smart, they'd find a better place to hang out.  | |||
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| Diamond Card Talk Member |
The Spotted Lanternflies have invaded my yard. I've seen them in the parks but didn't know they branched this far out until this morning. My neighbor is running around with flypaper yelling "Step on them, step on them". There after her grapes. I don't care, I've got nothing to eat by me, but a lot of other houses have small vegetable gardens that attract everything. I'll say this much, these little moths are fast, and they can jump a few feet before they fly. Stomping on them isn't easy. Hope the Winter kills them off or they are here to stay. | |||
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| Gold Card Talk Member |
It won't be long before some celebrity is going to be banging the drum about how you can eat those lanternflies by cooking them in some olive oil and then mixing them into our nachos. I once saw Salma Hayek eating crickets on the Today show. | |||
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| Diamond Card Talk Member |
It's been a while between killer bugs, but we have a new winner. The cannibalistic Mormon Crickets have invaded Nevada by the millions. Besides eating everything in sight, including each other when it comes down to it, they seem to smell bad. They last showed up in 2019, although I don't remember hearing of it. Maybe Covid took up the news cycle. No word if they have hit Las Vegas yet, but they could organize online sports betting of Mormon Cricket races and cage fights if they do. | |||
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| Gold Card Talk Member |
I had heard of Mormon crickets before but I looked them up and learned that they are actually not crickets but a member of the katydid subfamily. Katydids are those thin, green grasshooper-like insects you see almost everywhere. It would seem Mormon crickets aren't much of a threat since they eat other insects and each other. However, they might become a danger after any kind of nuclear weapons exchange between superpowers. Anybody remember what radiation did to cockroaches in "Damnation Alley?"
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| Diamond Card Talk Member |
The giant cockroaches in "Damnation Alley" were added to keep the audience awake. Now "Them" is the film you want to see, also "Tarantula." Strange how some of the black and white 50's Sy-Fi is still better than most of what we get now. No big bugs, just big plants, but Howard Hawk's "The Thing from Another World" is a masterpiece I rewatch almost every year. | |||
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