I am such a slug. If I was any sluggier, I’d have tentacles and leave a trail of slime behind me as I VERY SLOWLY slithered about. In order to check to see if there were any usefully named parts of a slug for the previous sentence, I was forced to google “parts of a slug” and now I’m all icked out. I’ve been on Wikipedia a lot lately; Google consistently leads me there. I learned the other day, just by random chance, that the bugs I have always called Daddy Longlegs are not, in fact, a Daddy Longlegs spider. They are Harvestmen. Did you know this? It wasn’t because I was interested in spiders or daddy longlegs…Wikipedia led me there by some intricate route of tangents and links.<\/p>\n
In case you didn’t know, THIS is a Harvestman<\/a>, which is not actually a spider, though it’s an arachnid (which is what I thought made a spider a spider). This is a Cellar Spider<\/a>, which is also called Daddy Longlegs and is the only one of THREE insects so called which is actually a spider. The third of the creatures which is often referred to as a Daddy Longlegs is a FLY: the Crane Fly<\/a>. Which amuses me, because we always refer to Crane flies as Skeeter Eaters. They don’t eat mosquitoes, though, more’s the pity.<\/p>\n In fact, I think Crane flies might have some of the best nicknames ever. In various places, in addition to daddy long-legs and skeeter eaters, they are also called gallinippers and gollywhoppers. Gallinippers & Gollywhoppers! That’s awesome.<\/p>\n Interestingly, though probably only to me, the word slug<\/i> is probably of Scandinavian origin, having come to Middle English as sluggard<\/i> from the Norwegian word slugga<\/i> which means to walk sluggishly. Hmm…circular reasoning anyone? So, really, and grammatically speaking, when I’m declaring how lazy I am being, I shouldn’t be referring to myself as a SLUG. Slugs are, unless hibernating, quite energetic apparently, and some species can actually destroy foliage faster than the plants can grow.<\/p>\n HOWEVER, this particular fact that Wikipedia states has caused me to want to scrub out my brain: In a few rare cases, humans have contracted parasite-induced meningitis from eating raw slugs.<\/i><\/p>\n I’m sorry, but fut the whuck? That would infer that most cases of eating raw slugs do NOT end up with meningitis, and HELLO WHY WOULD ANYONE EAT A RAW SLUG?! Or any slug, for that matter? I am not going to google further. I AM NOT GOING TO GOOGLE THIS. <\/p>\n Really Great Writing Out There Right Now<\/b>: Arranged for Milking<\/a> (via Mimi Smartypants)<\/font><\/p>\n Currently Crushing on<\/b>: Tootsie Fruit Rolls. Yum yum!<\/p>\n Bang! Pow! Badoom! Belated Birthday Wishes to alcesalces<\/a> and Chuck!<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am such a slug. If I was any sluggier, I’d have tentacles and leave a trail of slime behind me as I VERY SLOWLY slithered about. In order to check to see if there were any usefully named parts of a slug for the previous sentence, I was forced to google “parts of a slug” and now I’m all icked out. I’ve been on Wikipedia a lot lately; Google consistently leads me there. I learned the other day, just by random chance, that the bugs I have always called Daddy Longlegs are not, in fact, a Daddy Longlegs spider....<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-sillybutt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4480,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1904\/revisions\/4480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lizardek.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}