Originally posted by All Creatures Great And Small
I've wondered about this myself, how something that is 1/1000th the size of me could instill such absolute terror and ridiculous behavior in me when I see it! (My whole family does the "bee dance", when a stinging insect is near us, with the flailing arms and the screeching ) I finally decided that I would try to remain still when there's a bee or wasp near me, and I now can control the "bee dance", but I am still very afraid. I used to be afraid of spiders (my mom is PETRIFIED of them), but since they move so slow, I know they can't "get me" before I get them. I am so glad I have never experienced a cockroach close up, but we do have centipedes here, in the basement, and those things make me scream and do the "centipede dance" because they move so dang fast and you can't catch them to "euthanize" them!!!! So then you know they're lurking somewhere, waiting to scare you again...........
OMH! I hate centipedes, they are also poisonous and hurt very bad if one gets ahold of you. In 29 Palms, we had this huge one crawl out of our bathrub! They run like hell, as it was so hard to catch and we were very afraid of it biting us. It ended up running into my pants and we couldn't find it for about 30 minutes. We looked everywhere, of course the pants were off. We started stepping on the pants to try to kill it. You would have thought we had stepped on it but no!We shook the pants out and there it came running at us again! We eventually killed it, thank god. It was so terrifying.

We also had scorpions in our garage! When we first moved there we didn't know there were scorpions and we would walk out into the garage barefoot, never turning the light on. Well one night we happened to turn it on and what do you know, there were scorpions everywhere! Tiny little fast things. We killed them with a shovel. I can hold a scorpion in the petstore (the blue ones that glow under a black light) but in the wild they freak me out. I was sad after my bf squished them but relieved at the same time.

I used to be afraid of spiders but for the past month I have been forcing myself to pick up the nastiest of them that come into the house. It saddens me to kill a creature just because it scares me, when all they want to do is come inside for some warmth. So I have been catching them with my hands and letting themgo. Haven't been bit since and now i have more respect for them because contrary to what I thought, they are actually very timid gentle creatures. I don't know if I would pick up a black widow, or brown recluse. If those bit me I wouldn't come back, lol. Luckily I have studied spiders in Oregon and know which is poisonous and which is not, and therfor do not have to be afraid if they give me a little nibble or two, although it does sometimes hurt.