I was hooking up a trailer in central Florida once, and I started hearing all this hissing and plunking in the canal right behind me... I shined my flashlight onto the water and there were all these eyes reflecting back... I ran my butt right back to the truck and refused to get out.  My husband had to get up and hook everything up for me.  When we went to the gate to leave, the guard said, "Oh yeah, that was just the alligators.  They're not too big yet- couple feet.  Some of the guys in the warehouse kinda take care of them."  Florida is a bad, scary place.

Colitas, I think those were cicadas you were talking about. We had them in Vegas, they emerge every 17 years there I think. Lovely sound  - crunching of shed ectoskeleton as you walked up the sidewalk. I hated them almost as much as I hate grasshoppers. They only appeared once while we lived there - thank goodness.

My family is originally from Mississippi. The summer I was four years old, my baby brother was only two weeks old. We took a driving trip back there from CA to visit "kinfolk". The mosquitos loved the tender newborn flesh of my little bro. He was so bitten up that at one cafe they refused to let us in thinking Keith had measles or some other contagion.

My uncle used to say that the 'skeeters are so big back there that one night he woke up to hear them arguing about whether to eat him there in his bed or take him outside. Yeah, I believed him 'til I was about 10 years old!

Hey, samheath, is that kind of like, what comes around goes around, well bring it on my friend & lets get it over w/. Y'all girls in the south, Fri Nite @ Brite Lake just as the sun set, the mosquitoes attacked, I mean billions, finding any orifice possible to penetrate. Freak, Out! Seriously, I would Invent some sort of, sexy, cozy, rugged, which ever one is appropriate, net like cover to wear, ANYWHERE it might be necessary, if I lived out there. Sushisoo, sounds good, come on you fashion girl, lets get these Southern girls protected in a fashionable way!!

Joty,Ci cadas was a jeopardy ? the other day, I said Locust, loser.

madkow...you're right, Florida is a bad, scary place...you especially gotta watch out for them 'hanging chads'....    :O

Ahhhh.....but don't forget about the fireflies! I loved watching the fireflies blinking on & off at night, flying through the trees & over the fields in Kansas.

Sure, the cicadas could keep you up at night with their ruckus; but being able to catch a few critters & write your name in glow-in-the-dark bug juice on your t-shirt.....priceless!

Joty, IHAVE to email you something!!! WOW. How do I get it to you?

Just sent you an email...

I have never seen a firefly...or a fly fire.   

I lived in Nashville for three years, and had never seen a firefly or heard a cicada before that.  It was so neat to see fireflies floating waist high over the fields!  And the cicadas, I loved listening to them fill the trees.

You should see the glowing bugs they grow in Mexico...I found one that had two huge, green headlights on the top of its head. It was a black beetle type creature, about an inch long.

Bizarre!

I'm ok with most bugs/insects/spiders - but not grasshoppers. No grasshoppers!!!!  

I like that when you hit a bunch of fireflies, they still glow on your windshield for a minute, these weird green globs all over the place.  :)  Texas was the weirdest place for roadkill though.  I hit bats, an owl, frogs, a turtle, to name a few.  I almost hit some wild pigs and turkeys too.  Eww, but the spiders... A lot of the rest areas have open bathrooms, so there were frequently spiders as big as your hand sitting right on the side of the toilet!  Not the thing you want to find out about after you've already sat down!

Madkow, when my dad was teaching me to drive we'd take long drives into nowhere and play "Road Kill Bingo." You have to ID the road kill in the proper order. First you have to earn your "B" for bear, beaver or "bloody," if the mamals just aren't dying to play along. The driver has the advantage of getting a "Free B" by knocking something down. Of course the passenger has to confirm the road kill. I just know the animal lovers are going to hate me for this one... ;  )  But we never purposely went after our own road kill...I swear. You can bank letters if you ID three straight non-Bingo roadkills, like armadillo, lizzard, snake. If you just can't find any decomposing Night Owls, or Newts, or Gators or Gorillas, you fall back to the descriptives like "Icky, Nasty, Gory, and Odiferous."     &nb sp;  

Disclaimer: No animals were harmed in the posting of this comment.

Sushi, that's way better than the license plate game, IMO!  LOL!!

Joty, I was calling ME the loser, not you silly! Did you get the email? So, you did get it? The lion one?   I'm editing this, I just checked my emails.