oh, the hard life we bug haters lead.

It hardly needs to be reiterated that I don't handle situations involving large bugs well.

At all.

Like, they totally freak me out and I want to run away and hide in a small hole in the ground for the next year. Wait, except that holes in the ground usually have bugs in them, so scratch that.

But I've been doing better this summer, I promise. I've killed lots of gigantic spiders and beetles and mosquitoes without the help of anyone else. (Yes, killing them myself counts as "doing better." I didn't say I was naming them all and keeping 'em as pets.)

However.

This afternoon, walking around outside, something caught the corner of my eye. Something long and grey and thick, crawling up my shirt.

I screamed, (and oh, baby, it was the Mammy of all screams; seriously, I don't remember when I've screamed that lustily ever before,) and slapped at the THING simultaneously, (because I've got some wicked awesome skills when it comes to making noise and killing bugs at the same time.) It fell off, completely bewildered and not a little stunned, I'm sure, and proved to be the biggest, nastiest looking Praying Mantis I have ever laid eyes on.

I think the unexpectedness of seeing an unknown foreign object climbing up my shirt, combined with the endless possibilities running at the speed of light through my mind of what evil creature it very well might could be, were what caused me to lose it so completely. 'Cause lose it completely I did.

And here's the best part. I screamed so loud and so hard that I could barely talk for the next hour. My throat was sore enough for me to gargle salt and lemon water, and let me tell you, it takes a really doggone sore throat for me to be reduced to those straits.

After I changed my shirt, (it had been contaminated by the bug's presence,) and vigorously washed my hands and feet, (because the nasty thing had the audacity to fall first on my foot after I wildly beat him off my shirt,) in hot, soapy water, I felt a little better.

The Praying Mantis? Well, I went and looked for him on the patio, to show mama just how massive and thick he was, but he was nowhere to be seen, and my guess is he was holed up in a corner somewhere, living up to his name by praying for his ruptured ear drums.