Squawk Radio

This weekend we visited friends. We headed south which, from Minnesota, is pretty much anywhere else in the contiguous United States, and once again it was borne in on me why I don't live "south." Because Mothra and it's Mothra-spawn live "south."

Now, I'm not generally a coward. I've fed bats by hand at the Wildlife Rehab Center; casually relocated snakes from one area of the yard to another; barely blinked when a mouse ran over my foot (alas, sometimes in the house) and while I'm not going out of my way to pal around with spiders, I generally have a "live-and-let-live" attitude. But when it comes to beetles or centipedes or ANYTHING with a crunchy exo-skeleton and soft, liquidy interior that chitters and skiddles and brrrrrr! I'm phobic. Hate 'em. Will go a hundred feet out of my way to avoid them. And yet, there I was Sunday night on a dimly lit porch in Missouri face to face with this ....thing called a Cicada. Ever seen one of these?

Gawd! They are roughly the size of a transport flier, louder than a tornado siren and they attack! I kid you not. They leap at you and take flight, skittering and buzzing and ew!

I have no trouble admitting to you all that I screamed. Loudly. Until my husband, knight in shining armor that he is, came onto the porch, scratched his head, bent down and picked the ***er up! I kid you not.

Civilized woman by day; blood-thirsty enemy of all things with a carapice by night, I started chanting, "kill it, kill it, kill it" but no, he picked it up and threw it over the rail into the grass so that it could live to terrify another day. But not me. The next morning we hightailed it back to Minnesota where the winters might be a tad long but they don't harbor the sleeping forms of mothras...

So this leads me to wonder...got any phobias you want to share? Anything set your skin crawling or jump-start your breathing into over-drive?