damn dirty buggers

by goose at 10:35 PM on November 19, 2002

If you ask me about phobias, I'll truthfully tell you I don't have any. A phobia is what you convey to your psychoanalyst to get sympathy and a label with ten syllables. It's something stupid and fabricated, like Eurotophobia, the fear of female genitalia.

What I do have, however, is a blood curdling, will-kill-to-escape-from, hereditary terror of insects. Call it girly. I don't care. You go on Fear Factor, sample the cockroach cuisine, and I'll just keep eating Pringles and other foods with no exoskeleton.

I'm just going to keep on doing my Matrix-style backward bends to dodge any bees that might be flying on a beeline (oddly enough) towards me. Bees, and even those inconsiderate flies that look like bees, scare me exactly the same way bullets do. They're fast flying projectiles that hurt.

I'll never eat seafood for the simple reason that crustaceans look like big alien bugs. Shrimp, contrary to their popcorn image, are just little alien bugs, and the way the public salivates for them makes it that much worse for me. The segregation of the meat department is what I hold most sacred. Lobsters had better keep their claws away from my cow meat, because four legs always wins.

To me, "hornet," "wasp," and especially "spider" are all strong synonyms for "death." Seen the new Harry Potter movie? If you're like me (but I doubt you are), plan on taking a five minute intermission near the middle.

So when I heard way back that scientists were building robot bugs, I shat a beetle. On my last count, there were over a million known insect species, and that was already two million too many. If we're going to be developing even more, I may have to consider becoming a Luddite.

Nuclear and chemical warfare don't bother me. But the instant I suspect Saddam Hussein has gotten hold of remote-controlled tarantulas, I'm getting a bunker of my own.