Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Bugged

Published on Monday 17 July 2006 16:11

THE summer is here and that means just one thing.

Insects.

Vile arthropod swine are now chewing, sucking and crawling their way into our lives. Were it not for the mercy of DEET and Avon "Skin So Soft" I would now be an empty husk gathering dust under my workstation - a decaying monument to loss and emptiness. Thanks to these wonders of science I am gathering dust in front of my workstation.

(As an irrelevant aside - how unlikely in this column! - I can confrim the anecdotal evidence on the UK Climbing Forums that the abovementioned moisturising product does indeed keep the midge hellspawn at bay.)

To pass the time until blessed winter freezes the six-legged hordes into oblivion, I've been hunting for giant insects (on the web only) to remind myself that there are worse things than midges.

However, I found this item which made me feel much more sympathetic towards those with an exoskeleton. It's a video of some Americans in Iraq tormenting a camel spider. Camel spiders are famous across the web for being the size of a dinner plate, running at 25mph and injecting deadly poison into their victims and eating camels from the stomach out. The web being the web, all of this is complete fabrication, utter nonsense. In short, there's no justification for these yahoos to trap the poor beast in a jar.

(If the video doesn’t work, go to YouTube.)

Well, at last I know what the Yanks are doing with their time in Iraq because they sure ain't bringing peace and prosperity to the godfordsaken place. (Mind you, I can’t really blame them too much, if I had the misfortune to be in Iraq I'd be hunting very small creatures as well - specifically by grovelling in the dirt begging to be sent home.)

My sympathy for invertebrates was aroused by the above video. But even David Attenborough's soothing tones over the following clip couldn’t stop my feelings of revulsion.

This is clip of a a foot-long venomous watcher in the dark that eats bats. That's bats, as in mammals. As in creatures quite closely related to us.

(If the video doesn’t work, go to YouTube.)

It's enough to make HP Lovecraft scarper off for an unscheduled toilet stop. My politics are terribly green and worthy but the prospect of a centipede the size of a whippet heading straight for the family jewels causes one to re-evaluate the benefits of biodiversity.

Roll on the freezing weather.