Entomophobia

It seemed like only yesterday I was staring shocked at a test result I took on Facebook. I took it like a smarty-pants and expected it to tell me that I had no phobia. Well it told me I had Entomophobia. I was so confused. You see- I wasn't that little girl who ran away from all bugs of all sorts. I loved them. I collected rolly pollies and felt terrible when my cousin showed me how to make my hands glow with a dead firefly. It wasn't just those. I loved crickets, frogs, toads, worms, snails, butterflies, lady bugs, preying mantises, and even some spiders. I know many of those aren't techically bugs- but it's close enough for a kid.

There were always those few insects that I just could not stand, spiders that looked mean and anything that would bite or sting me. 

Since then I've had quite a few experiences with bugs that have created this phobia in me.

One event was the "Year of the Spiders and Wasps" as I like to put it. At my house we seem to have a multitude of different species every year. One year we had millions of Vietnamese lady bugs, another we had a million frogs, and another example would be those rare blue tailed lizards that hide under our porch. This particular year we had a million spiders and a million wasps. Their home base was our wrap around porch. You literally could not walk outside without fear of walking into those large spiral webs. Orbed Spiders mostly were our invaders, but we found probably fifteen black widows on our porch that summer.

It also just so happened to be a year that our dryer broke down and we were hanging our laundry on the porch to air-dry. I actually broke down in tears when I found a huge spider on a shirt I was folding. 

An interesting side note- spiders and wasps are enemies. All of those black widows we found on our porch were dead. We were very curious about the cause when we caught the culprit in the act. The wasps were literally stinging the spiders to death. 

So I sided with the wasps that year, I figured they were the lesser of the two evils.

The moral of the story is, when spiders create traps that will cause them to fall on your head and crawl down your back you tend to develop a phobia. I know that the fear of spiders is a different phobia altogether- but it increased my fear of other bugs as well.

I've been home alone, in a panic with a vacuum cleaner, trying to kill the wasp so that I could do whatever I needed to do in that room. 

But I'm not just afraid of the obvious villains. I've also come to fear other bugs, bugs that people would never dream of fearing.

One of these would be the Crane fly. I know, I know they aren't giant turkey mosquitoes.. but I really can't imagine anything else. I fear they've come to get me and they're going to bite like a horse fly. Also a bit fearful of them because they tend to crash land onto my face while I'm trying to snooze.

The one that I've been trying to forget- for the sake of my reputation- is the butterfly. The Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly to be exact.

There I was, minding my own business, when I saw a butterfly with an injured wing. She couldn't fly on her own, so fascinated I decided to pick her up. I handled her carefully, knowing that I couldn't touch her wings- even if she was going to die anyway. I watched lovingly as she nuzzled my thumb. All of a sudden, as I was watching the nuzzling, I felt a pinch exactly where she was "licking" In a panic I shook her off my finger and since then have been very... cautious around butterflies.