#bug death tw

[tardigradebutt]

the fruit fly is almost as big as her 😭

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was being chased around by this like. MASSIVE millipede while two fictional characters (I can't for the life of me remember who, just that they were men) just stood there and watched. Finally, I had to shoot it in the back of the head and I was utterly devastated about it and woke up genuinely distraught.

[silene-stenophylla]

I saw an isopod today

There were two, actually.

Small bodies bathed in yellow, iridescent plates

Shining like gold and sunlight and honey

Shining like love

Their small antennas are so delicate, so caring and thorough in their work

Legs moving with such precision

Imagine the brainpower it must take to move so many legs at the same time

The mindfulness it must take just to keep moving

There's something undeniably intelligent in that, something breathtaking

I feel like I have something to learn from these animals, these small, complicated bodies that are so determined to live

That they don't mind the effort

It scares me too, to watch them

Knowing how fragile they are.

Knowing how badly they want to live and how they too, lack any control

Everything could be over so quick

Do they know the danger they're in?

I went camping a few months ago, a nice cabin up by a lake with a bonfire out back

I carefully turned over the stones that made up the fire's resting place

Scared I would find life, scared of what lighting that bonfire would hurt

When my dad said he wanted to use it that night, I went out to the yard and got working

Checking each piece of wood, searching under every last sacred rock

On my knees like a prayer, dutifully sifting through these tiny cities of stone

Under every one, I found isopods

Surrounding that fire bed, the soon to be red hot stones teeming with livelihoods

I dug through and collected them, and moved them somewhere different

Safer

I'm probably a monster to them

I needed to help them. I needed to get them away from the fire, but it's not like I could explain

I uprooted them from their homes and carried them somewhere unfamiliar

I ruined any semblance of normality they might've had

Uprooting or burning? Which ones worse?

Is it still saving if it still hurt? They'll never know about the fire, they'll never know what would've happened if they'd stayed to become kindling

In their eyes I caused nothing but harm

I watched the fire like penance that night

It was hard to feel the warmth through the burning, searing heat

I can't know if I got them all out

I can't know if that campfire was some kind of murder

I don't know how to stop grieving for what might've been

I don't know why no one else is seized with that same, thrashing panic that fills me so completely over things like this

What is an acceptable murder?

People don't think twice about killing some things, don't think about what their joy might cost

Inescapable fear, mass extinction of young, writhing life

How do you grieve that?

Knowing its happening every day? Knowing no one else cares like you do?

I hope I didn't miss any

I know I must have, I just have to swallow it and try to help the next one in line

I wish it stopped

I wish I didn't have to hold so much grief in my dirty hands

But it lives with me, under the rocks of a campfire where I've spent years being branded by small, avoidable deaths on a scale so large I can't fathom it

I'm still trying to help the isopods escape, but it's not just my stake to burn on

No, it's a mass grave

I can't save everyone from burning with me

I can't handle this massacre much longer

[unhingedlesbear]

Just fed Becky her first superworm. Feels kinda bad bc David, Viktor and Buell are that species but... this one wasn't David, Viktor or Buell soooo....

[f1zzlest1ckzz]

i just hit a moth so hard it evaporated. what the fuck

[elytrafemme]

moments that are too poetic in of themselves to be effectively transformed into poetry (though i'll try) i entered such a panicked frenzy for twelve hours that when the fly was in my room after my brief 30 minutes of calm i just felt my heart in my throat but i stopped panicking just reached this primal level beyond actual words but it grew and grew until it completely changed me and i was actively taunting it and i hunted it down in my room and beat it to death and immediately after couldn't breathe again and now i feel the same tension in my body i felt before that i felt all day. i don't know what the fly is a metaphor for but i think something might have shifted out of place and it might just stay there forever.

[coleopterabyte]

Anybody else find it kind of weird when people want to make memes that involve a talking live bug, but they use images of dead bugs to so?

[drunkcleric]

How come the bigger the bug the more likely they are to just emerge from the shadows the second you're naked or have your pants down?

I was on the loo and the biggest wasp I have ever seen jsut fucking teleported out of nowhere and flew at me full speed, where tf where you!?

I was in there 30 minutes and nothing, the second my pants greet my ankles BAM! A BUG!

[basement-creature]

a beautiful little friend who couldn't be saved :(

[nicol--bolas]

the dogbane beeb deserves its own post

[martyr-inthedark]

Make your Whumpee tired.

Whumpees that have been deprived of sleep by Whumper, so much so that they don't remember how to walk in a straight line and can't figure out whether the recent appearance of little black bugs in their cell are real or a hallucination.

Whumpees that can't get a full night's rest. They doze off, only to be jolted awake by their own anxiety of not knowing when Whumper would come back. Perhaps they are awakened by phlegm-coated coughs induced by their illness. They are awakened by nightmares, or by Caregiver who is worried they may succumb to hypothermia, or by a thunderstorm, or the rough blanket scratching their open wounds, or so on.

Whumpees who pull all nighters to protect their friends or lovers.

Whumpees whose eyes burn when they finally can close their eyes. Whumpees whose muscles twitch, who can't stop yawning no matter how hard they try to stifle it. Whumpees with dark, glassy eyes. Whumpees who are slow to react or have a hard time keeping up with the conversation. Whumpees with throbbing headaches. Whumpees with brain fog and memory loss.

Whumpees who have been on the run and have over exhausted their bodies. Their muscles and joints continue to scream long after its over. Whumpees with extensive blood loss. Whumpees who are malnourished.

Whumpees whose survivor's guilt keeps them awake, wondering what they might have done differently, whether it was all their fault, or why they were the ones to live.

Whumpees whose bodies are in chronic pain or illness and who have to hide it, causing muscle and mental fatigue. They keep going with a smile until they collapse or pass out.

Whumpees who break down in tears, begging to be left alone so they can rest. Whumpees who sob when they are told that the bed in front of them is theirs to use whenever they want.

[daifei]

le faune

[onetomb]

I’m grading insect collections for the class I TA for, shoutout to the student who turned in a house centipede without legs and tried to claim it was a grub. How does it have no legs, these guys are 90% legs??? Also appreciate the cruel-hearted calculations of the people who clearly didn’t have enough so decided it sacrifice their pet insects. Three hissing cockroaches met their fate this finals week 🫡

[archimedes-stims]

x

[catofox]

feeling some kinda way tonight