The Ferocious Bug That Sucks Prey Dry and Wears Their Corpses

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/absurd-creature-of-the-week-assassin-bug/

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~Sue~

Hey bug people. All the tips of my snap pea shoots got eaten off this year. My first thought was earwigs. Am I right to suspect them or is it more likely slugs/snails.

Hey bug people. All the tips of my snap pea shoots got eaten off this year. My first thought was earwigs. Am I right to suspect them or is it more likely slugs/snails.

Finches? Found this on the internet - seems they'd exhausted all other possibilities. Long read but it may help discount them as culprits...

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/rmgard/msg101615573316.html


Suzie - hope your bites are healing well and that THAT picture you last posted is NOT your way of telling us something about how you're covering them up :)

My bites are healing well, thank God. They don't even itch anymore.
One of the bites became a huge blister before it broke open. It got a bit
larger than it was in this photo.



That's the inside of my left calf, slightly above my ankle.

The other bites I got became very small blisters. I sure would like to know
what kind of mosquitoes they were to cause blisters like that.

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~Sue~

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~Sue~

Glad to hear they're healing - does look painful though :(

Probably a combination of the mosquito bite and the existing inflammation causing your skin to "delaminate" (I'm sure there's a medical term for it..."

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Glad to hear they're healing - does look painful though :(

Thanks. They weren't painful. They were very itchy, which can be worse
than pain, sometimes.!

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~Sue~

Glad to hear they're healing - does look painful though :(

Thanks. They weren't painful. They were very itchy, which can be worse
than pain, sometimes.!

Just got off the phone to my sister and she's had exactly the same problem today - with midges though (whilst gardening) and is covered with VERY itchy blisters :( She's trying calomine lotion and antihistamine - with no relief.

They were very itchy

Really, you should try monosodium glutamate...

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Glad to hear they're healing - does look painful though :(

Thanks. They weren't painful. They were very itchy, which can be worse
than pain, sometimes.!

Just got off the phone to my sister and she's had exactly the same problem today - with midges though (whilst gardening) and is covered with VERY itchy blisters :( She's trying calomine lotion and antihistamine - with no relief.

I've never heard of midges biting. I always thought they just annoyed you
by flying around your head.

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~Sue~

They were very itchy

Really, you should try monosodium glutamate...

Do you mean as a supplement, or something I'd rub on the itch?

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~Sue~

As soon as you can after the bite. Just a caution,
perhaps do a small test first to make sure you
are not going to have a bad reaction. We always
sort of patted it on the affected area. It is also
good for stinging nettles etc.....

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When I found a centipede in my boot the hard way, the corpsman made a paste of meat tenderizer to draw out the venom and help reduce swelling and infection. Just laid it on and covered it with gauze. Worked great.

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

Ammonia is good for itches/bites if you get it on there pretty quickly. I
had something called "After Bite" (brand name) that is just a small container
of ammonia, but it was empty. I've put it on my shopping list.

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~Sue~

When I found a centipede in my boot the hard way, the corpsman made a paste of meat tenderizer to draw out the venom and help reduce swelling and infection. Just laid it on and covered it with gauze. Worked great.

The corpsman carried around meat tenderizer?

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~Sue~

When I found a centipede in my boot the hard way, the corpsman made a paste of meat tenderizer to draw out the venom and help reduce swelling and infection. Just laid it on and covered it with gauze. Worked great.

The corpsman carried around meat tenderizer?

Yep. Accent, if I remember correctly. His office was right across the passage from the Galley on that boat, cooks alwaays had a big jar.

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Donald
Infernal Optimist / Submariner, retired

I use it to help the kids forget that they
just had an encounter with nature.....
(Bugs, stinging nettles, and other such things.)

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I was out mowing my back yard today. I pissed off a lot of grasshoppers! I saw
a small toad trying to escape from the path of the blades, so I stopped, picked it up,
and relocated it to a safe place. But the best thing for me was getting to see this
beauty. It's a wolf spider carrying an egg sack. I've seen a lot of wolf spiders, including
a couple with babies on her back, but I never thought about how the babies got there.
Now I realize that she constructs an egg sac and carries it around with her until the
little creatures emerge and climb up onto her back. I was afraid I'd lose her between
the time I first saw her and the time I got out there with my phone/camera. I almost
did. But while I was looking for her I saw yet another, smaller wolf spider with an egg
sac. I didn't photograph that one. I was after the big prize! Isn't she marvelous?!


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~Sue~

She is gorgeous Suzi!! So glad you managed to relocate her to take the pictures :)