Wapsi Square Forum

It's not that the earwig goes in your ear, it's that it comes out the other side, or so I was told in Junior High.

Ick!

Thank you. I'm sure we all needed that mental image.

At least, in Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, the bug thingy came back out the same ear...

If it helps, baby spiders, of any species, can't penetrate human skin. Same with daddy longlegs and a variety of the other 'small bodied' long legged beasties.

Re: baby spiders: Don't care...{shudder}.

Yank the orifice out of the propane torch, light...FWOOM!

Gods, I hate spiders.

Atomic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 05, 2018 5:42 am It's not that the earwig goes in your ear, it's that it comes out the other side, or so I was told in Junior High.

Ick!

That one just ain't so.

However, I did see a "Bizarre ER" episode with a little girl having what her parents thought were seizures. And the hospital was about to send her for a brain scan. When a nurse noticed that the little girl smelled like dry leaves. So she asked the kid, and learned that there had been an unscheduled nap in a pile of dry leaves. So she looked in the girl's ear, and after a bit of prep work pulled a bug out of it.

The bug wasn't biting, just trying to move around.

Hearing is basically a form of super-sensitive pressure detection. So imagine a bug stomping on an eardrum... PAIN!!

Just Old Al wrote: ↑Fri Oct 05, 2018 11:26 am Re: baby spiders: Don't care...{shudder}.

Yank the orifice out of the propane torch, light...FWOOM!

Gods, I hate spiders.

A can of RAID can be used as a flamethrower, but hairspray works better.

My brother rolled his Jeep, and for awhile afterward had bad vertigo. There are calcium carbonate particles in the middle ear, and it messes you up if they get out of place.

The therapist put him through a series of maneuvers to manipulate them back. Said it fixed the spinning like turning off a switch.

For a while, my dad suffered from Ménière's disease, which affects the inner ear. He has tome me that when the symptoms would hit him, he suffered such vertigo that he had to get around on all four.

I have never witnessed those events. I don't think it's affecting him anymore. (According to Wikiepdia, the symptoms stop, after a while...)

lake_wrangler wrote: ↑Fri Oct 05, 2018 4:07 pm For a while, my dad suffered from Ménière's disease, which affects the inner ear. He has tome me that when the symptoms would hit him, he suffered such vertigo that he had to get around on all four.

I have never witnessed those events. I don't think it's affecting him anymore. (According to Wikiepdia, the symptoms stop, after a while...)

I always thought that kind of behaviour was caused by alcohol poisoning

My father is actually missing the bones in one ear - makes hearing a lot iffy there. I've had the 'can't really stand up', but it's usually due to excessive lack of sleep, allergies, or illness. Luckily I've never really had any massive medical issues - just lots of little ones that are mostly "Live with it".

Warrl wrote: ↑Thu Oct 04, 2018 11:02 pm Well, I can tell you that earwigs have no special fondness for ears. That is, as compared to other tiny moist holes they can hide in.

Years ago on leave I was helping put out wildfires in Mexico. One of the other guys there, an American kid from very rural New England, had so little knowledge of Spanish that he'd probably be at a loss just trying to place an order at a Taco Bell.

One day he asked, "What's with all of those signs saying 'PELIGRO' and 'DANGER'? What's a peligro?"

So I told him that peligros were a type of pest similar to ticks and chiggers, and that they are notorious for crawling up people's legs and making nests in any warm dark crevices that they could find. Some of the Mexicans joined in and contributed the helpful fact that if you smear some certain flavour of toothpaste around your legs at the knees, it drives off the peligros so that they won't climb your legs.

So for the rest of the time that I was there, the kid was keeping a stockpile of toothpaste in his bag, and the solicitous Mexicans were always very careful to check with him to make sure that he was applying it properly before he went out into the bush.

Mexicans are very hospitable people.

There's a story that when my grandfather was in high school (mid to late '20s), they got a new teacher, a guy from Philadelphia, just out of college. This was in Northern Greater Appalachia, about 90 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The county spreads between two mountain ridges, and a lot of the land is naturally glades (i.e., upland swamp).

Granddad and his buddies glad-handed the guy for awhile, and then invited him to come along on a hunting trip.

For snipes.

Out in the swamps east of town.

In October.

He only lasted the one year.

When I was a freshman in college, several of the upperclassmen invited me on a snipe hunt.

Put me on post out in the middle of nowhere, and beat feet back to the dorm . . .

. . .

They were most annoyed to walk in and discover me reading a book in the dorm lobby when they got back!


They should have known better than to try that on a country boy! I'd organized snipe hunts!


BTW, did you know there really are birds called snipes, and people really do hunt them? (with shotguns . . . tough targets.)

--FreeFlier

FreeFlier wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 10:53 pmBTW, did you know there really are birds called snipes, and people really do hunt them? (with shotguns . . . tough targets.)

Hence the origin of the word Sniper -- if you could hit one of those, you were a good shot!

I always told people that we were looking for the elusive spondulix. It'd been seen in the area, and if they could catch one in a bag (you hand out burlap sacks), there were people that would really like to have it.

Bookworm wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:12 pm I always told people that we were looking for the elusive spondulix. It'd been seen in the area, and if they could catch one in a bag (you hand out burlap sacks), there were people that would really like to have it.

Any love for the Moss-covered Three handled Family credenza?

Atomic wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:42 am

Bookworm wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:12 pm I always told people that we were looking for the elusive spondulix. It'd been seen in the area, and if they could catch one in a bag (you hand out burlap sacks), there were people that would really like to have it.

Any love for the Moss-covered Three handled Family credenza?

No, unfortunately. Too many people know what a credenza is, but very few know what a spondulix might be. Yours sounds MUCH more entertaining.

Bookworm wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 5:57 pm

Atomic wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:42 am

Bookworm wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:12 pm I always told people that we were looking for the elusive spondulix. It'd been seen in the area, and if they could catch one in a bag (you hand out burlap sacks), there were people that would really like to have it.

Any love for the Moss-covered Three handled Family credenza?

No, unfortunately. Too many people know what a credenza is, but very few know what a spondulix might be. Yours sounds MUCH more entertaining.

Of course it is... but it is spelled "Gradunza", however...

Bother - I stand corrected.

Now what AM I going to do with my collection of sundries, notions, knick-nacks, tchotchkies, and conversation pieces?

Atomic wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 9:30 pm Bother - I stand corrected.

Now what AM I going to do with my collection of sundries, notions, knick-nacks, tchotchkies, and conversation pieces?

Store them with your guzunder?

Bookworm wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 11:12 pm I always told people that we were looking for the elusive spondulix. It'd been seen in the area, and if they could catch one in a bag (you hand out burlap sacks), there were people that would really like to have it.

Bill Fields fan?