Centipede 1, Superman 0 (plus a broken digital camera)

Zadius · Post by **Zadius** » 2006-06-26 04:13pm

I did this kind of stuff as a kid as well. Frying ants with a magnifying glass is always fun and I did my fair share of that, but I particularly enjoyed fucking with flies. I'd shoot them with rubber bands when they landed or I'd capture them and pluck off their wings and let my dog after 'em.

During the summer when the fireflies are out in force at night, I'd stalk around our backyard and wait for one to light up and *SMACK* hit that fucker with my plastic baseball bat. They light up when they get hit and they make a beautiful parabolic path on their way to the ground.

I also took my super-soaker water gun to a few bees and wasps. They never knew what hit them.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-06-26 04:18pm

Superman wrote:And by the way, this type of thing is exactly why men and women are not equal in every single goddamned way. Woman are better at certain things than men, and vice versa. I honestly don't know how some people can believe that men and women are supposed to be identical creatures, especially when there's more biological difference between the genders than there is between humans, as a species, and chimpanzees.

Indeed. Only a man can understand the impulse to torture a bug because it pissed you off

It may not make any sense, but we do it for shits and giggles. My brother and I were both teens at the time, and we were making bets on whether it would still be alive on the second day. I thought the little bastard would still twitch on day 2, but he let me down.

Pick · Post by **Pick** » 2006-06-26 04:27pm

I used to torture cucumber bugs and spiders with my brother. He made this entire Lego torture array with gears and crushers and all sorts of stuff. It was pretty amazing. We did that every summer until I was about 10.

More recently, I only torture spiders. Because I hate them. Centipedes are pretty awesome, though, so I leave them alone.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2006-06-26 06:30pm

Pick wrote:I used to torture cucumber bugs and spiders with my brother. He made this entire Lego torture array with gears and crushers and all sorts of stuff. It was pretty amazing. We did that every summer until I was about 10.

More recently, I only torture spiders. Because I hate them. Centipedes are pretty awesome, though, so I leave them alone.

Biologically speaking, centipedes are actually very primitive. They've been around for a much longer time than insects, and probably spiders too (arthropods predate arachnids?). I guess one could say that in itself should warrant them being treated with a little more respect... but... nahh...

I actually tend to leave the spiders alone (usually), unless it's a Black Widow. Contrary to popular belief, Black Widows are the only spiders in California with venom that is dangerous to humans (that is, unless you're allergic to the toxins of other critters). I tend to see spiders as fellow allies in my war against the flying bugs that invade.

Speaking of killing spiders, has anyone else noticed how damn resistant they are to insecticide? The last Black Widow I killed took a good 1/4 of a full can before it finally died. Same with other house spiders I've nuked.

Spice Runner · Post by **Spice Runner** » 2006-06-26 06:35pm

I've seen at least half a dozen spiders around the house since the beginning of the summer. I just grab them with a napkin and send them straight to the toilet for a nice flush.

Einhander Sn0m4n · Post by **Einhander Sn0m4n** » 2006-06-26 11:56pm

Spiders I leave alone (Brown Recluses excepted). As for execution methods, try thermite. Put the thermite in a small clay pot on a steel (I cannot stress this enough!) stand, then put the Defendant in a plastic cup directly below the Prosecution's thermite pot. Get a sparkler, bury its 'handle' completely in the thermite, and light it.

DANGER: Thermite burns at 4000° Fahrenheit/2500° Centigrade! and is IRREVERSIBLE ONCE INITIATED! Needless to say, if it burns, this shit will light it on fire. It will also spray molten iron EIGHT to FIFTEEN times the diameter of the pile or container it's in. I strongly recommend removing all remotely flammable (i.e. not steel, concrete, or bare earth) material to forty diameters of the thermite execution apparatus!

The sparkler will ignite the thermite, which will start spraying brightly glowing molten iron out the top. The most important part is that it will also burn itself through the bottom of the pot, landing on the Defendant's Box, subjecting him and the Defendant to Justice via aforementioned 4000° Fahrenheit/2500° Centigrade molten iron and its attendant effects. Toasty!

Darth Garden Gnome · Post by **Darth Garden Gnome** » 2006-06-27 01:33am

Superman wrote:Speaking of killing spiders, has anyone else noticed how damn resistant they are to insecticide? The last Black Widow I killed took a good 1/4 of a full can before it finally died. Same with other house spiders I've nuked.

Lysol kills spiders right quick. Not instantly, mind you. The force from the spray (this assumes you're just a few inches away) will probably break most of its legs. You can hit a few more times and leave it to wallow in poison, where it will die eventually. I keep one on my computer desk just in case I spot one of those fuckers in my room; let them know I am here and I take NO SHIT from fucking bugs.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-06-27 08:31am

Superman, I thought you had a degree in entomology. Maybe it's another Superman I know, hmm.

Personally, I hate slugs. Those things are just useless and get everywhere (I found one on my bedroom window on the first floor once, no fucking idea how it got up there). I always keep little sachets of salt from KFC or McDonald's and use it on them. They turn into green foam balls. Ah, the advantages of having a protective epidermis.

Spiders I leave alone, because I admire them as supreme bug hunting machines. My dad isn't too fond of them, but I like 'em. Something about the big ones that makes me wish there were man sized ones around to eat people I dislike. Anyway, when I was young, I didn't have this love of all things creepy crawly, or anything biology related (which is now ironic). So I got one spider that had been crawling on me one sunny summer's day, and put it in the washing up bowl. It tried to swim for a bit, then, it did the most bizarre thing. It disconnected all eight legs, and sank. I had a spider that for its last act in life, turned itself into a raisin.

Ants are another pest, even if I find them fascinating too. When they get too troublesome - and we did have a huge nest at one point that produced swarms of flying ants every summer on the drive - I use boiling water and heat-ray (sorry, high-powered magnifying glass) to dispatch them.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2006-06-27 02:11pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Superman, I thought you had a degree in entomology. Maybe it's another Superman I know, hmm.

For the record, I'm the only Superman that counts

. And no, my degree is in something far superior, although equally as useless (at the BA level anyway), which is anthro.

Personally, I hate slugs. Those things are just useless and get everywhere (I found one on my bedroom window on the first floor once, no fucking idea how it got up there). I always keep little sachets of salt from KFC or McDonald's and use it on them. They turn into green foam balls. Ah, the advantages of having a protective epidermis.

Spiders I leave alone, because I admire them as supreme bug hunting machines. My dad isn't too fond of them, but I like 'em. Something about the big ones that makes me wish there were man sized ones around to eat people I dislike. Anyway, when I was young, I didn't have this love of all things creepy crawly, or anything biology related (which is now ironic). So I got one spider that had been crawling on me one sunny summer's day, and put it in the washing up bowl. It tried to swim for a bit, then, it did the most bizarre thing. It disconnected all eight legs, and sank. I had a spider that for its last act in life, turned itself into a raisin.

Ants are another pest, even if I find them fascinating too. When they get too troublesome - and we did have a huge nest at one point that produced swarms of flying ants every summer on the drive - I use boiling water and heat-ray (sorry, high-powered magnifying glass) to dispatch them.

Sounds like a typical biologist childhood to me...

Vicious · Post by **Vicious** » 2006-06-30 05:31pm

Centipedes are the one insect group that freaks me out. Spiders (unless it's a Brown Recluse or other nasty strain) are my friends, because they kill other bugs. Ants are pests, but they receive no animosity other than being pancaked. I don't even bother finding something to squish them with. My finger is more than enough to goo them on a hard surface. Wasps (which I have a problem with during the summer) get a rolled-up magazine or a book. I've become expert at getting kill-shots though the bastards can be durable as fuck. I once had a wasp who survived three hits hard enough to knock it across a 30-foot room into a wall. That bastard got put down hard when I caught it (the blows did stun it, and it couldn't fly after the third time).

Akhlut · Post by **Akhlut** » 2006-07-01 08:04am

Darth Wong wrote: Earwigs are tough little bastards.

Not if you crush 'em! They squish real easy-like. Well, really, it's more of a crunch then a squish.

Mrs Kendall · Post by **Mrs Kendall** » 2006-07-01 09:43am

Akhlut wrote:
Darth Wong wrote: Earwigs are tough little bastards.
Not if you crush 'em! They squish real easy-like. Well, really, it's more of a crunch then a squish.

Exactly, we seem to have an earwig problem this year and all I do it grab a kleenex and squish it between two of my nails, either that or I put the bunched up kleenex up against the wall and I give the bug a good squish between my wall and my fist

If I can't find a box of kleenex fast enough I just use a shoe and then mop the floor of his guts afterwards.

Post by **Edi** » 2006-07-01 10:17am

I generally dislike arachnids on a visceral level, but I usually go out of my way to catch spiders alive and toss them out the window or dump them in the biowaste bin where they can have fun with the fruit flies. Arthropods are the worst with the icky factor, so they might get squisehd. Most beetles I'll also toss out, same with wasps, bees, bumblebees and so forth. Flies, mosquitoes, flits and other such bugs get killed.

As for insects, arthropods, arachnids and other such things bieng tough bastards, Kaljamaha told me how his father once captured a scorpion in Nicaragua, one maybe four or five inches long. A friend of his wanted to make a mold out of it for casting models. So the scorpion goes into storage in the freezer for several months. When it's taken out so it can be dumped in molten copper to make the die, it starts moving after a few minutes on the table in the sun. Well, no big deal, right? Dump in molten copper and that'll be the end of that, right? Wrong. It took the critter several minutes of trashing around before it finally died, and so much for a usable mold, it was all wasted.

The critters can also withstand something like 20,000 times the amount of radiation that would kill a human, so microwave is not as effective a weapon as simply squishing them.

Edi