The Cat Is Too Useless To Eat It
There is a daddy-long-legs stalking me. It’s quiet at the moment but I think its spying on me from up by the top of the curtains. It flutter-bombed me in the face earlier on and I thought it was just a mistake.
“Ah, it’s probably more afraid of you than you are of it, the wee soul,” I chuckled bravely, right before it flutter-bombed me again, this time round the corner in my head and this time with a more direct diving action. And then a third time near my toast! I tried turning the table lamp out thinking it was being attracted by the light, but everything seemed worse in the dark so I turned it on again.
I’ve been watching it for about an hour now, even glaring sometimes so it knows I’m not a person to be trifled with. It’s been eyeballing me from various places too high to swipe at but I have been making sudden movements to let it know I can be unpredictable too. Then a wee while ago it disappeared but I last saw it near the curtains so I think it’s still in there somewhere.
I know it’s up there just waiting for me to go to sleep so it can creep all over my face with its hideously-kneed legs and lay all its unspeakable little eggs in my warm ear. I know it.
August 25th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I wasn’t going to blog tonight but I can’t concentrate on my book and I needed the pretend company of some internet friends to keep things feeling normal while I wait for the little bastard to make its next move.
I have a terrible fear of daddy-long-legses (daddies-long-legs?) God, if only it was daylight! I might go and sleep with Problem Child 2. She’s not afraid of anything.
August 25th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
This is amazing. I’m sitting on the train, there’s a DDL on the window about six inches away. I’m trying to decide whether to ignore it or look all girly by flapping at it, and then I open your site and read this!
I don’t have any children with me that I can hold in front of me like a shield.
August 25th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Mine has just vanished, which is a bit disturbing. I’m just hoping it’s not in my clothing somewhere…
…. actually, I’m probably not helping you, am I?
August 26th, 2008 at 1:36 am
It was probably just attracted to the light from your face, Sam. Had I been there I would have eaten it for you.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:22 am
Crane flies, just scoop em up and toss em out the window. They don’t bite, totally harmless they are. They lay their eggs on the ground and their larvae are called leather jackets. You could make yours a pet and call it Armani.
August 26th, 2008 at 2:51 am
what Conan said. though earwigs are a different matter entirely.
i ain’t afraid of nuthin… ‘cept them, and the dentist.
August 26th, 2008 at 3:16 am
Google reader has sent me here. Hurrah for goggle reader. Was petrified of them in my youth too but I think my father telling me that they were ‘just flying eyelashes’ helped me conquer the fear in the end. Could it work for you?
August 26th, 2008 at 5:04 am
Ah, girl you are in good company. I do not know your position on Robert Frosts poetry, but in A Further Range ‘36, there is a lovely poem called the White-Tailed Hornet.
While the stance of A Clear And Visible Danger is a good one. You would not go to photograph Lions in the wild without protection. And if you yourself are a bit iffy about wielding a swatter, you have bred two and you could egg both of them on.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:44 am
There was a DLL named “Rupert von Niedersachsen” who was quite famous in DLL scientific circles. He allowed a six year old to pull his legs off and then stuff into an air rifle in order to be shot out like BB, thereby being the first DLL to go ballistic.
Think about that achievement the next time you feel any malice toward those poor creatures.
Cheers.
August 26th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Talking of earwigs, the most unfairly maligned animal in the world due to a gross misnaming.
The word “ear” in earwig is not in fact a reference to an auditory organ at all at all, but is an early English form of “arse”. Hence, earwig: arse-wiggler.
So now!
August 26th, 2008 at 8:45 am
We used to collect DDL’s in jam jars for fly fishing – they make great trout bait. They are a bit scary mind, like huge mutant mozzies!
August 26th, 2008 at 8:46 am
….hmmmm should’ve been “DLL’s” – DOH!
August 26th, 2008 at 9:07 am
I think you and DLL need a cooling off period. Too much staring, too much hostility. It may be absolutely necessary to DLL?s cultural identity that he flutter bomb you, his fathers and fore fathers etc. He has that heavy weight of generations of flutter bombers in his legs, it may indeed be an existential DLL flutter bombing thing. So, it?s all a bit of DLL coat trailing
Sam, he?s probably needs a big hug. Failing that, like nanas said, but deep fry him first.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Tinman, nobody takes out fear seriously, do they? I think for me it’s all the knees, and the span of them if they landed on my face. I’m convinced this happened to me as a baby because I have always had the most terrible, irrational fear of them.
Nanas, I know you would, my dear gorilla. And I would have kissed you full on your leathery lips as soon as I knew there weren’t any stray legs left between your teeth.
Conan, but it’s not a rational fear, that’s the problem. I’ve never been able to talk myself out of it. And then I read that they have the most toxic venom known to man. They don’t bite people so it doesn’t matter but they paralyse other bugs with it. Paralyse them! And people think they’re cute!
Rosie, earwigs don’t have the knees to terrify me as much. Plus they scurry and I don’t mind scurriers, I just hate flutter-bombers and wide-stance many-legged foot-planters. They trigger something primitive in my hindbrain – their shape is pure, ancient horror to me.
BiB, howya? Flying eyelashes is a beautiful way to describe them. Unfortunately I can only see them as the eyelashes of a fanged and slavering Medusa.
Vincent, unfortunately I have told the kids there is a no kill policy on house-bugs and that we have to return them to nature (shake them off a newspaper out of the back door). If I got caught murdering one now it would be like that time when i said they couldn’t eat chocolate between meals and they caught me with a Crunchie. Right then, if they’d sent me to my room, I’d have probably gone.
Rand, we all have to suffer for our various arts I guess. Having no legs probably made him more aerodynamic. Bit of a bummer on landing though. Did you really do that?
Bock, leaping livers, that’s horrible. These little pinchers!…On your… Ooyah!
Quickroute, YES! Mutants! Only more capricious and fickle than mozzies. More conniving. Sometimes they work in pairs.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:38 am
I come from a family of daddies with short legs. Can’t be doing with those long legged snobs
August 26th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Sniffle, call me a species imperialist if you like but I wouldn’t care it he lost all sense of his cultural identity, became ungrounded and spent the rest of his life living out of an old supermarket trolley under a highway bridge somewhere. I want to break its spirit.
In the end, I slept with the light on completely under the covers, wrapped tightly with no entrance possible for it into my cocoon of fear. I checked again this morning adn its’s no longer near the curtains. Trouble is, I don’t know where it’s gone. It could be anywhere. It could be on my head right now, softly, carefully, evilly weaving a nest for its young.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Kim, I come from a family of Longbothams. Truly! There was a Yorkshireman in one of my great great great granny’s pasts!
August 26th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Ah well, if you’re talking funny named ancestors, I had a great great great aunt called Fanny Picking. Absolutely true.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
The flutterbombing is bad. But still not as bad as evil spiders. EVIL spiders. I get a cup and a postcard – if you put them on a newspaper they might scuttle back up your arm. Gah!
August 26th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
the worst think is it knows it too…..it;s gonna use your fear against you…..like a chef does…..
August 26th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Ohh I love daddy long legs! They are kind of like the giraffes of the spider kingdom.
August 26th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
You You You! Is it only about you? What about your children? When was the last time you checked on the children? And you call yourself a…a…mother?
August 26th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Sam, I ain’t sayin’.
What I will say is there was a time in 1966 when my brother found the remains of a DLL on his neck and to this day, he doesn’t know how it got there.
Cheers.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Kim, I about busted various spots along my alimentary canal laughing when I read that. My God, the poor woman! What a trial that must have been, a lifelong trial. Or did she marry a Picking? God, he must have been good.
Jo, there are all manner of unGodly new creatures to fear out here in California. Nobody told me about black widows for instance or garden wolf spiders so big you can hear their footfalls in the guttering! You would die a fainty death with your spider phobia. I’m a shadow of my former self.
Manuel, but chefs don’t hide in your curtains. They can’t crawl through eensy weensy spaces and just look at you. You’re right though, on a scale of relative diabolicalities they’re neck and (no-)neck.
Laughykate, I know Australia’s one of the spideriest places in the world, is New Zealand similar? I wish I could have your whimsy about daddy long legses. Could I buy it off you?
Amanda, well, see, Idon’t but one day these two small pink people started calling me it and they’ve kind of just kept right on with it. I recall a birth…some pain…jello and ice chips and…the rest of the time til they were one is a bit of a blur. Now that they can hold the cat down ’til I snort cocaine off its back with the milkman, I don’t care what they call me, as long as they stick around, right?
Rand, blimey. You wee devil! How did he know what it was without its legs? Was it still alive? God, I’m no fan of them but I hope it died after the first leg!
August 26th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Flutter bombed has been added to the Sneezeford English Dictionary.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I’ve just realised that in the very first comment I used the abbreviation DDL.
Which of course would be Daddy Dong-Legs.
You don’t wanna be flutterbombed by one of those…
August 27th, 2008 at 12:53 am
There’s a new kid on the block – barely visible , white legs and a black centre and weaves webs in remote corners. They don’t frighten me and with my new found courage I sweep them up with a tissue and chuck’em. Everything else makes me a gibbering idiot.
Ear muffs would thwart ‘em.
All the men in MTL’s clan have fine firm frames – and short legs.
Nobody’s perfect ‘cept thee and me and thy’s a bit off at times:)
August 27th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Sam, you would be cured of your DLL fear if you lived around mukade, or centipedes, which we had in Japan in spades. They didn’t get in your face like DLL, but believe me, they didn’t have to. After a summer in Japan, I never even blinked when I saw a DLL.
But I know all about the irrational fear thing. Cockroaches won’t hurt you, but if I saw one of those, I’d be on top of the table.
August 27th, 2008 at 3:48 am
Why do they do that, why do they insist on flapping about in your face? I hate them for that alone. Moths do it too and they crumble, eugh!
August 27th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Have you tried fashioning a Scaredaddylonglegs out of some lollipop sticks, toilet paper, a condom and bits of string? You should try it. In fact, if you make four of them you could corner the little fucker.
August 27th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
i have decided i have no soul or rather, none that will be redeemed if god is a spider…i swat/squish/smash and generally KILL them when they bother me! now, i don’t go out of my way, but if a sucker crosses my path in MY HOUSE – he’s history! xoxo
(not to worry, charlotte would have been spared – her house, her rules)
August 27th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
They are everywhere this year. In the kitchen, in the bathroom, and last night, on my pillow. ENOUGH, I say.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Sam, I think he was after your lovely toast.
Who wouldn’t like a nice piece?
August 28th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Sam – thank you for confirming these evil little twiglets are the most poisonous things on earth (no one ever believes me). Hope he’s gone now. Can you have Mummy Long Legs I wonder, or is that another design fault explaining why the Daddys are at a loose end?
August 30th, 2008 at 12:48 am
Sneezy, flutter-bombing sounds a bit like the men’s synchronized diving competition too. Kudos to the lone fella who was open about being gay. One gay person in the whole Olympics? No way, Alphonso!
Tinman – ha! Indeed! It likes a pricey Las Vegas “Experience”, possibly with Siberian tigers.
Pat, I used to sleep with tissues in my ears if I suspected there was a ddl in the room at night. It was no sort of sleep at all though, that sleep of expectant footfalls on your lobes.
Mary, Holy God! I just Googled mukade. I think I’d have to sleep wrapped in cling-film in Japan with two Samurai at the foot of the bed and the St, James bible clutched in my right hand. To squash it, like.
eryl, we went camping as a family in the Loire valley when I was a child. The communal showers and loos at the camp-site were full of these great white, meaty moths who hunted in groups and wanted to eat small Scottish girls like Serengeti lions eat baby zebras (I had a stripey swim-suit)
Cap’n P, Yes! An evil Scaredaddylonglegs! Made from lollypop sticks with a violent history and nothing to lose any more.
Savannah, I’m getting myself a gun to shoot them on sight.
debra, see Savannah’s comment. You have to fight fear with “Fire!” Chuck Heston learned us that.
Medbh – who indeed? Call me narrow but I don’t want to know the sorts of people who don’t like toast.
Kate – “evil little twiglets” – I love that! Deadbeat Daddy long Legses, I expect.