A Phobia Thread

[A True Kaniggit]

On 4/18/2024 at 9:47 PM, Madame deVenoge said:

Cockroaches. Oh, dear god. Aaaaaugh!!!

There was a patient that has this fear back when I worked in an emergency department. 
 

His family brought him in and he was completely out of it, just screaming, incapable of saying what was wrong with him. 
 

It took a while before a doctor thought to check his ears and found a little cockroach in there. 

[A True Kaniggit]

On 4/18/2024 at 11:16 PM, LongRider said:

Those wetas look scary to me. Please keep them in New Zealand, thank you. 

I had to look these up. First I saw ‘cricket’, and thought “not scary”. Then I saw ‘giant’. 
 

Yep. Those monstrosities can stay in New Zealand.   

[BigFatCoward]

9 hours ago, HexMachina said:

I was once a young little thing, on holiday in the sunny climes of Tunisia. As I loved to do, I departed from the mothership and went for an evening stroll around the hotel grounds. Beautiful. A light breeze stirred the trees. It was warm, lovely, peaceful. Oh, what's that? A leaf has blown into my top, I should brush it awa- 

FUCK WHAT IS THIS FLYING COCKROACH GETITOFFGETITOFFGETITOFF!

 

The above is a true re-telljng, and cost me dearly to recall

I put my trainer on without socks in gran canaria, and there were cockroaches inside. It was fucking gross. 

One thing that's helped me deal with some of the things I'm not great with, is trying not to pass the phobias on to my kids.  I'm much better with spiders since I've been conscious of not making them scared. 

Edited April 20 by BigFatCoward

[Fragile Bird]

7 hours ago, Tears of Lys said:

I used to go out with this guy whose parents lived in a 28th-story penthouse.  He regaled me with stories of how he and his brother used to run and throw themselves against the glass in play.  

Uh-uh.  nope.  absolutely not.  no way.  

Years ago, maybe in the 1970s or 80s, there was a lawyer at a big law firm in downtown Toronto in one of the fancy bank towers. The banks in Canada do really well and they all built snazzy headquarters. The offices pretty well all have floor to ceiling windows. Someone visiting the lawyer asked if he wasn’t nervous about the window. I think the guy liked to lean his chair against it. “Oh no,” he said, “the windows are very safe, you can bounce yourself against them and it’s perfectly safe, I do it all the time!” Then he demonstrated to the visitor, and bounced his body against the window, and the window cracked and he fell 20 stories or whatever to his death. True story. I made sure never to lean against a window in an office tower after that.

[Fragile Bird]

7 hours ago, DMC said:

This reminds me when I was in high school, I think 16, we went on a family vacation to Kiawah, SC.  It was only my dad and I at the place we were staying at.  I was..using the restroom, and I looked down and saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen - still to this day.

Now I’ve always been fine about killing critters.  But with this one, I got up, went to my dad, and was like “that’s all you man.”  He chuckled and was like OK, then went into the bathroom and literally was like “oh fuck!”  We still laugh about it to this day.

I used to go out with a guy who was a senior executive at a big mining company. He was visiting a mine in Indonesia, I think, or maybe Papua New Guinea, and the visitor quarters at the mine were grass huts on stilts. The walls were made of some kind of wood, bamboo maybe, that had bark on it and the wood had turned grey as wood will do. He was lying in bed reading a report late at night and caught something moving out of the corner of his eye, and grabbed the report and smashed it against the wall. There was a giant spider creepy crawling up the wall by the bed, and by giant, he said, he meant it was the size of dinner plate. If it had bit him it wouldn’t have killed him but he would have been very, very sick. The spider was the same grey as the wood and was more or less invisible against the wall.

He also had a story about being in Australia (after a visit to Papua New Guinea) meeting with company executives in Sydney. One of them had a dinner party at his house for the visitors. The house was not too far from downtown Sydney, and was up on stilts with the parking under the house, and had a nice verandah overlooking the large backyard. The couple had small children, and my friend commented to the wife that he was surprised there was no play area in the backyard, swings or a slide, like you’d see in Canada. Ah, she said, the problem was the pythons, they had lost a couple of dogs to them and they didn’t allow the kids to play in the yard.

I’m already nervous about spiders and snakes, thank you very much.

[Impmk2]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

The couple had small children, and my friend commented to the wife that he was surprised there was no play area in the backyard, swings or a slide, like you’d see in Canada. Ah, she said, the problem was the pythons, they had lost a couple of dogs to them and they didn’t allow the kids to play in the yard.

Unlikely to be pythons. They're not venomous. There's none in Australia that'd be a threat to a human afaik.

The eastern brown snake is the more likely culprit. One of the most venomous snakes in the world, and you do occasionally see them around in urban areas. Dogs will go for them which can end very badly for the dog. I do worry about our girls.

However they're generally not aggressive snakes at all. They'll go the opposite way when they hear people coming, so while there's the odd rare death they aren't a big worry. We're talking maybe a single death a year for a snake pretty commonly found around the major Australian cities. Just gotta look where you're stepping if you're off the beaten track, don't walk through long grass, and if you see one don't get ideas about trying to kill it or catch it.

[HexMachina]

6 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I put my trainer on without socks in gran canaria, and there were cockroaches inside. It was fucking gross. 

One thing that's helped me deal with some of the things I'm not great with, is trying not to pass the phobias on to my kids.  I'm much better with spiders since I've been conscious of not making them scared. 

in Fuertaventura we had cats around the hotel that delighted in killing cockroaches, it was both a relief (when the cockroach was scuttling toward us) and a terror (when they'd proudly bring us their prey and drop it at out feet)

[A True Kaniggit]

But are fears of snakes, cockroaches, and spiders really that irrational?

The little bastards can actually be scary depending on their size and biting capability. 

[DMC]

28 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

But are fears of snakes, cockroaches, and spiders really that irrational?

The little bastards can actually be scary depending on their size and biting capability. 

Agreed.  My brother has a phobia of spiders because he’s even terrified of the tiny harmless ones.

[A True Kaniggit]

38 minutes ago, DMC said:

Agreed.  My brother has a phobia of spiders because he’s even terrified of the tiny harmless ones.

Yep. Now that’s a phobia. 

[DMC]

15 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Yep. Now that’s a phobia. 

Strange thing is he’s much more comfortable than I am killing other critters with his bare hands than I am (I prefer to use at least a tissue unless it’s really tiny).  Especially with the centipedes that plagued our old ass apartment building in Pitt.  I didn’t wanna touch those gross fucks.

[Ramsay B.]

The house centipedes? I used to have them at my old place too. Never knew they existed before that. Weird ass little things with so many legs. So quick too.

My older sister is so scared of spiders she can’t even watch videos of them or look at pics. It’s crazy.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Ramsay B. said:

So quick too.

Yeah they’re tough to kill.  When I saw one when I was drunk though, it was ON!  Funny thing is the grossest huge ones are usually old and dying, so normally easy to kill.

[LongRider]

Spiders and snakes don't bother me that much, but what does bother me?  Goddamn ticks!  Hate those MFr's!   Also, not so crazy about tall grass 'cuz that's where I picked up 3 revolting ticks several years ago.  Fortunately, I found them while they were still 'questing' (crawling) lookin' for blood.  M'eh I hate and fear those things.   

Edited April 21 by LongRider

[kissdbyfire]

11 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Spiders and snakes don't bother me that much, but what does bother me?  Goddamn ticks!  Hate those MFr's!   Also, not so crazy about tall grass 'cuz that's where I picked up 3 revolting ticks several years ago.  Fortunately, I found them while they were still 'questing' (crawling) lookin' for blood.  M'eh I hate and fear those things.   

Haaaaate the little MoFos! Can't say it's a phobia or even fear per se but I do fucking hate the bastards. Mosquitoes too. 

[LongRider]

3 minutes ago, kissdbyfire said:

Haaaaate the little MoFos! Can't say it's a phobia or even fear per se but I do fucking hate the bastards. Mosquitoes too. 

Mosquitoes get no love from me either.   Little bastards, go bite a tick. 

Edited April 21 by LongRider

[RhaenysBee]

Ticks. Ticks. Ticks. 

not sure what traumatized me more - school lecture about tick season precautions in second grade or Willem Dafoe’s tick infested hand in Antichrist. Nah, I’m sure, it was the lecture. 

[Tears of Lys]

On 4/21/2024 at 1:48 PM, LongRider said:

Spiders and snakes don't bother me that much, but what does bother me?  Goddamn ticks!  Hate those MFr's!   Also, not so crazy about tall grass 'cuz that's where I picked up 3 revolting ticks several years ago.  Fortunately, I found them while they were still 'questing' (crawling) lookin' for blood.  M'eh I hate and fear those things.   

I had one on the back of my neck under my hair a few weeks ago!  I told my husband to take a Q-tip soaked in alcohol and kill it first, then gently extract it with a tweezers.  I have no idea whether he was successful or not at removing it intact.  They bury their heads into your skin, and if you don't get it all, it can be . . . difficult for you.  I didn't want to bust his balls over it, but he's not the best at delicate maneuvers.

All I know is that I have a small swelling in that area and it itches now and then, two weeks later.

 

[A wilding]

4 hours ago, Tears of Lys said:

All I know is that I have a small swelling in that area and it itches now and then, two weeks later.

Get your husband to watch out for a rash there, particularly a target like one with concentric rings. If in doubt go see a doctor and get antibiotics. Lyme disease is not fun and needs to be dealt with promptly.

[Larry of the Lawn]

There are also other tick borne illnesses like anaplasmosis and erlichiosis (sp), of the bite can become infected with incidental bacteria. 

I fucking hate ticks.  Unusually get a dozen or so bitten into me per year.  This spring I've only had one so far.  Hoping for a mild year, but this winter was mild so probably going to be a wee bit bitey around here.