Open Thread WE 7 JUN 23 ~ June Bug Day
Submitted by QMS on Wed, 06/07/2023 - 5:00am
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If you wish to keep the June Bugs away then you must turn off your lights and just keep them at bay.
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Commentary --
So many stories, so little time. What hasn't already been spoken? News is not new,
more like a replay of an eternal theme. The names change over time, but the need
to control stays ever the same. Maybe the yungins' can find change?
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National Citizens Against Police Harassment, Police Against Citizen Harassment Day
Does that mean cops are against being hassled?
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1955 "$64,000 Question" hosted by Hal March, premieres on CBS TV
1989 For one second this morning, the time is 01:23:45, 6-7-89
2018 Baltimore ex-police sergeant Wayne Earl Jenkins, head of a rogue police unit sentenced to 25 years for robbery and racketeering
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Opening it up to your observations, insights and speculations ..
Comments
Good morning
Got a kick out of this short video of
a flying squirrel enacting the crime scene and playing dead.
Critters are so funny!
enjoy
Good morning...
It Jap beetle day for me. The Japanese beetles arrived here 20 years or so ago. The love certain plants, like Hazel nuts and apple trees. They defoliate the plant and skeletonized leaves which is the the primary sign. I use milky spore (a grub killing fungus) in the spring. Those that survive I use a small bucket of soapy water to shake and brush the beetles into to die. Even if you kill most of your local beetles they can fly in from as far as 6 miles away.
So it is my first morning chore. I use a large coffee plastic jug half full with soapy water which makes it easy to get around the plants under the feeding beetles. They tend to drop straight down into the soapy water. I also do this in the evening. It doesn't eliminate the problem, but does keep them under a threshold, so you still get some fruit. Our skunk population is on the increase. They feed on the grubs and are a helpful ally. They are pretty cute too, unless they hang around the house at night when the doors are open.
As a kid we used to catch June bugs and tie a thread around a leg, and fly them in circles around us.
1 min
Y'all have a great day, and thanks for the OT, QMS.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
bug on a string
that's a new one for me
sounds like a battle with the jap beetles
good luck with that
in other news ..
Japan dumped radioactive waste water into the Pacific Ocean yesterday
per yahoo news ..
what could possibly go wrong?
ask the fish
Bugs!
We had or still have a damn scorpion infestation.
So far, we have encountered 10. I was stung once. They are most likely coming from under the house through various holes drilled for plumbing pipes.
The quick and easy fix for a sting is Benedryl.
Well, the world has more perverts in it that we really realize.
I and my client had made numerous attempts to alert authorities in 2 counties that my client's child was being molested and likely sexually assaulted by her mom's boy friend. Well, he was arrested this weekend. That poor little 4 yr old girl will have psychological issues forever. As he was being arrested, Mom told the child, "Don't tell your Dad because that will be bad for us." Not "you, kid." Nope. "Us". She will lose custody, she will pay child support. Poor her, amirite?
I got confirmation of all of this last evening. I do not mind working late when I can get some very positive court rulings to protect a child.
Kill bad bugs, people, and snitch on pervs!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
why is it the powerless always seem to suffer?
shakes ones' faith in social intention
keep up the good fight!
Scorpions
Freedom of the press Ukrainian style.
https://www.rt.com/russia/577581-ukraine-journalists-military-censorship/
Fighting until the last Ukrainian continues!
"We had to destroy the world in order to save it."
The failures of the western empire become more obvious
as this scripted docudrama unfolds. Destroying a country
to bruise an imagined enemy is psychopathic.
One of These Days
Howdy all, Hey Capt. QMS!
Those opening couple notes of "One of these Days" (by TYA above) are a couple of the best I ever heard. Ya need a wall of Marshalls to get the proper effect.
Re: bug on a string... In Africa they have long flown locusts like that as toys.
Interestingly 'June bugs' are known to entomologists (bug people) as May beetles. They are Scarab beetles. There are near a couple thosuand Scarabs in the U.S., from flower scarabs to dung scarabs, and methinks over 500 species of 'June bugs'. Many live 1-3 years as a larval grub in the ground. Generally they have one season as a flying adult to breed before they perish.
On poisons one thing that often works with many is hot hot hot as you can stand it water. Many poisons are protein based, which cannot take heat. I think around 105F many collapse. You can put enough hot enough water on your hand (or foot in the bath tub - ask my how I know) to largely neutralize the majority of it, greatly reducing the effects. Five or ten minutes does it. Get the area real real hot right away at injection site before it goes anywhere.
In the 1960's fish collectors kept a pot of hot hot coffee on board in Hawaii, in case of Lionfish. My brother got hit (working in the fish biz in L.A.) and ran for the coffee as instructed. Besides the burn, nothing happened, 100% effective. I have used it with success on Scorpion stings. Fortunately those here are honeybee or so, a Red Harvester Ant is worse. And the formic acid is unaffected by heat.
I step on the toes of my shoes and work toward heel to make sure no surprises in there. Check the crack in the hat, etc.,and the cardinal rule, especially of being outdoors, but if you live around scorprions, never put your hands where you can't see them. I squeeze my leather gloves fingers before I put them on, and so on.
If you got a little tat everytime you got hit, I'd have at least five little scorpions now, a Sonoran Lyre Snake (rear-fanged poisonous), a Mantis Shrimp, a Fire Coral, a Brown Recluse (it just love-tapped me), some stinging hydrozoans, several species of wasps and bees, and a bunch of cute critters.
Alas, as the song lyric said, "my tatoos are scars".
I gotta fly... Have a great day all!
edit removed an errant letter
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Hey, thanks for the remedies
Sounds like you have mucho experience with the stingers!
Dysto,
I might have known you would be the expert evil bug and fish expert!
I would have 3 scorp tats if I tatted. 3 red wasp tats, one copperhead tat, 2 brown recluse tats, one tick carrying Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever tat, and one donkey biting finger tat.
So far, I have ducked and missed the bats! So, no bat tat!
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Hey OtC!
Yeah those Red Wasps can punch way over their weight, eh? A Copperhead? That would make such a nice tat. What a beautiful snake. I used to catch Rattlers with any old stick I'd break off a tree, or a 5-iron (the golf club - makes a great snake hook). A miracle I never got hit. Figure I wore my odds out and quit playing with them. Had a Blue-ringed Octopus crawl across my hand once, apparently it did not bite.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
I'd have
about a hundred tats of box jellyfish, courtesy of one dive off Antigua. We were hanging out on the stern line at our 15-foot safety stop, and a whole cloud of the teeny little bastards drifted up on the tide- there must have been a major spawning event upstream somewhere. Went from zero to OW OW OW fuuUUUCK! in about 20 seconds. We finished up our safety stop, got back on board the boat, and hit the Benadryl and a long, hot Hollywood shower.
That's the dive that ended the "the water's warm, so I don't really need a wetsuit" portion of my diving career. Got a fire coral sting as well, and from onshore some really good fire ant stories, a bunch of wasp and bee hits, and even a mosquito-carrying-dengue hit. But there's still nothing like having those box jellies hit all over my carcass all at once. They make the fire ants seem kinda mellow.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I forgot about the 1,000
fire ant tats.
I got stung so many times, I had to go to the hospital! They got up to my knees, both legs, before I even knew iT
I would want those tats to be an orangish-red.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Fire ants
are vicious little bastards, aren't they? You can be unknowingly standing on their nest, and a bunch of them will quietly crawl up onto you. And then at some semi-magical antish pheromonal signal, they all. bite. you. at. once.
The worst of all is one or more bites on the naughty bits. Whoop. Then the dance begins. For those who haven't had the pleasure: avoid it...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Man, they hurt me! And they did all magically sting at once.
Of course, brushing them off my legs got them on my hands and arms.
Last week, 2 flies landed on my ankle, bit in, started sucking blood. They were so intent on their blood sucking, I was able to move around, grab a swatter, smack 'em dead.
Those tats would be black flies with red mouths.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
Gulf coast
biting/sucking flies are nasty. They have the same loving je ne sais quoi that the New England Greenhead Horsefly (Tabanus nigrovittatus) exhibits, in spades. Which is to say, they bite a great huge friggin' chunk out of you, and then sit back and drink blood out of the puddle that immediately forms. After an attack, you look like someone shot you with birdshot.
Going to the beach in northern Mass, New Hampshire, or southern Maine from late June through mid-August, you'll run into these things in droves. You will then never forget them. Their tat would have to be a green icepick.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
those damned Fire Ants
Hey OtC and UFS... The defininition I heard was that one blows the horn, and then all bite. It is how it seems. Hundreds can get way up your legs without biting, and then they all do, OMFG!
Here in Texas it takes most 'foreign' birders (from other states where no Argentine Fire Ants) about one soft pile of dirt that they accidentally wandered in to whilst looking overhead into trees, to not do that again.
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
box jellies
I have heard those Box Jellies are one of the worst of all. It is really supposed to be bad... There are some Fire Anemones too that are pretty bad. I've been stabbed by so many fish spines of stuff considered 'mildly venomous', there are fresh and saltwater fish that will put you in orbit with the pain.
The dude that does the pain index with various things like Pepsis Wasp (supposed to be mega bad), Velvet Ant (another super bad one, which is a wingless wasp actually), considers theRed Harvester Ant worse than Fire (Argentine imported). Ther is a smaller Texas Native Fire Ant, but which is not as bad as the Argentine invasive. Which in Texas wiped out everything from Horned Lizards to Box Turtles, Bobwhite in some areas, and so on. They are an eco-disaster. They are the ones with the soft mounds you accidently kick or step in, soon to regret...
We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein
Had a dive buddy
who got well and truly gigged right in the palm of his hand by a lionfish down island. That looked like it smarted, and it got infected and took forever to clear up. He had a Mickey Mouse hand for the better part of a month...
I got gigged by a couple catfish way back in my misspent youth, but it doesn't take long to learn how to avoid that. Still, you wanna talk about infection vectors: fish spines (especially fresh water) are well up there!
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
wandering down a gulf shore MS beach
stepped on a catfish spear. ouch
otherwise the worse was wasps
crazy pain
WOW! Quite the statement if it is accurate.
Dmitry Medvedev
@MedvedevRussiaE
strong words
powerful sensibility
might print it before
it gets dis-appeared
just for the halibut
thanks y'all for sharing your bugger stories
God, your videos of Dancin' and the Lyin' Squirrel
(did I misstype?) were so fun!
I knew patrick Swayze, his mom, too. My Dance teacher from Conroe, TX, was close friends with his Mom, who ran the Swayze School of Dance.
Once a year, dance schools from all over Texas and Louisiana gathered in houston at a hotel with a ballroom. They brought in ballet, tap, and jazz choreographers and teachers from all over the US to teach symposium classes. At one ballet class, he was his Mo's featured dancer, and I was my teacher's featured dancer.
He and I took the class, were in front of the 50 to 75 other students, dancing away. He was nice, handsome, and also, a cowboy, like his Dad.
Wherever he is, he is dancin':
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
so you do the cowboy swing?
sounds like a lot of fun memories
thanks for sharing!
and keep on dancing
Ballet, tap, jazz,
two step, waltz, and Schotticche
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
I had tap lessons
as a kid in the 50s. Can still do a little jig that leaves the grandkids bewildered with open mouths.
Got to dance with some Hollywood showgirls once on the Sunset Strip.
I was such a cute little towhead.
Thanks for the OT, QMS.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
The Bullshit song I danced a million miles to
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981