Titsnakes

Meet Titanoboa. A thankfully long, long time ago, this guy was slithering around the jungles of South America. For most people, this isn't interesting. What is, is that this guy was up to 50 feet long and weighed over a ton. That's over double the length and ten times the weight of the largest known anaconda in modern history. In short, if this thing was alive today, it could break into your house/office/car, eat you alive, and fuck your dog without giving a shit about things like handguns or walls.

Take a look at this picture. Now again, twice as long and ten times the weight. Feeling like prey yet?

FOCUS: What extinct (beyond the obvious dinosaurs) species, if alive today, would kick our asses off of the food chain? Which do you find the most unnerving?

ALT FOCUS: Forget the extinct. Do you have any (ir)rational fears about living species? Maybe you have dreams about raccoons the size of Wolfhounds? Terrified of an army of rabid penguins marching through the streets of your city with impunity? Share it.

 

Cryptozoology weirdos believe that there is photographic evidence of a giant snake in Vietnam in 1964. I don't know, but it would be interesting to find a snake that big. I am also partial to avoiding giant isopods when necessary (those are unquestionably real).

 

What the hell is that thing eating? The caption description reads "wild saw." WTF kind of animal is a saw? If that's supposed to be "sow," those don't look like pig feet to me.

 

I once signed up to do a Great White shark dive off of the south of Australia. I was so scared I didn't even get in the cage. 2000 dollars for a 3 day boat ride. So much for forcing yourself to overcome your fears.
I'm also deathly afraid of snakes, I will run away like a little girl when I see a snake. I don't care what kind either. When I was about 15 years old me and my father were on our way to Churchill Manitoba hitting the walleye runs on the way up,,,,, and during the time we stopped by some fucking lake that had thousands,,,,, nay, millions of Garter Snakes. I guess they all migrate there to fuck. It was a fucking nightmare, you couldn't walk more than 5 feet without almost stepping on a snake. My father just laughed at me as I wouldn't get out of the RV. Dick.

 

Second. Snakes terrify the shit out of me. Do you want to know something really fucked up? The girl I'm now seeing, her father is a snake breeder. This is his second job. She gave me a tour of the farm. In the garage. They have about 300 snakes in clean, individual, labeled, boxes. There was a room, where they have constrictors. THAT terrified me the most.

I'll have to be careful with this girl. I don't want to re-enact Snakes on a Plane.

 

I'd be afraid of giant prehistoric wasps if they were the size of squirrels. I often get baked pool side in the summer and think how different life would be if I had to carry a sawed off shotgun around and be aware of extremely loud buzzing. It's amazing how rapidly wasps and hornets can construct a nest, how quickly they show up when you put meat on the grill, etc.

Now picture them weighing in at 2lbs or so and having 4" long stingers. Raid ain't gonna slow one of them bitches down.

 

Alt Focus: One time when I was visiting my great grand parents, I was like 4-5 years old, and their dog was eating a piece of fruit from the yard, but ants had already gotten to it first. So, when the dog came out to greet us, it had ants all inside its mouth.

I have an irrational fear of both dogs and ants now.

 

Third. My fear of snakes is very powerful and extremely irrational, even the small harmless ones will turn me into a little girl. I can't even barely watch TV shows or movies with snakes in them.

 

I don't have an issue with snakes at all. A guy I lived down the hall from in college had a pet snake and managed to keep it for a full year without getting caught. For a while, every two weeks or so when it was time to feed it, he'd go out and buy a couple of different colored mice and people would come over to watch and bet on which ones it'd eat first. That lasted until it started drawing way too much attention and he shut it down for fear of it being discovered.

Alt FocusOn the other hand, most (large) insects give me the fucking creeps. Whoever posted that milipede picture, thanks alot. I'll be thinking of that when I'm trying to sleep tonight. Back in high school, I learned that we had cave crickets in our basement when i was sitting on the couch watching tv and one decided to come crawling over my shoulder and down my chest. It was fucking HUGE. I'm not even going to look for a picture right now, but feel free if that's the sort of thing that doesn't bother you.

 

I can tolerate alot of things. I don't care about snakes, spiders, wasps, or cockroaches. I used to catch snakes while at school. My old cheerleading coach flipped the fuck out on me over it at one time. When my brother was a kid he adored snakes. My mom would let him keep his snakes in his bedroom. During that time frame 2 snakes escaped from their cages. Yes, inside the fucking house. One vanished for 6 months. He found it in the top of his closet. The other one my sister caught in his room, because she heard it knocking things off of his shelves. It drew blood on her.

I can't tolerate two things: needles and grasshoppers. I am not talking about the small, cricket-like, grasshoppers. I am talking about the giant grasshoppers that can grow as long as a human hand. Those bastards freak me the fuck out. I will turn bat shit crazy if I see one of those. I drove my truck into a ditch, because one was crawling up my leg while I was driving. Not fucking cool.

 

ALT. FOCUS: This isn't necessarily irrational, but the only things that causes my adrenaline to flow through the ceiling even at just the thought of an encounter are black widow spiders.

Now, most people are probably afraid of black widows. I actually have a good reason. My apartment in New Mexico had some sort of infestation. Over the course of a year and a half, I killed eight of them, and six were inside. The other two were over my front door. The scariest encounter I had was waking up one morning, walking into my kitchen, and feeling a sticky web around my ankles. I screamed (like a girl). I flicked on the light just in time to see a black widow scurry across my slipper and under my refrigerator. I murdered most of them with spider spray, but in my terror I used like half a bottle per kill. One time I used so much I had to leave my apartment for half a day because the fumes were giving me a headache.

If I never see a black widow again in my life, it'll be too soon.

FOCUS: I present to you the motherfucking Megalodon.

 

Ants. Not the ordinary black ants you see on a picnic table or even the fire ants that will sting if you get close. I'm talking about Army Ants. Here's how Cracked describes them:

I've had a few nightmares. The organic architecture reminds me of the Zerg from Starcraft, so whenever I read "army ant" I hear the sound of a hydralisk hatching.

 

Another horror is the Bullet Ant, an inch-long jungle picnic paramilitary not only shrieks, but will FUCK YOU UP. The Bullet Ant has the most ass-whipping sting in the entire insect kingdom, getting it's name from the fact a single sting is as powerful in the pain department as a bullet wound. Giant, hissing ants that jump out of trees onto prey. Yikes.

My only one true fear/phobia in the world is flying stinging insects, especially fucking yellow jackets, the worst living thing on Earth. And now, a previous abomination I posted: the Japanese Giant Hornet, which is the size of a praying mantis and spits corrosive venom. I haven't the words, but this video speaks for itself. Two dozen hornets exterminate thirty thousand honeybees in no time. If this doesn't scare you, what can?

 

Botflies.

The human botfly captures mosquitoes and attaches its eggs to them. When the mosquito lands on you and sucks your blood, the eggs drop off and go into the wound.

And then the fucking larvae start eating their way out. WHAT THE FUCK.

 

The Bullockornis or Demon Duck of Doom was an 8 foot tall, 650lb carnivorous duck. If you were ever chased by a goose or something as a kid... imagine for a moment it's 8 foot tall, 650 lb carniverous cousin.

Komodo Dragon's also scare the fuck out of me. Despite growing up seeing lots of salt water crocodiles and shit - the fact that a 10 foot long, 300lb land crocodile has not only a venomous bite, but almost 60 intensely virulent strains of pathogenic bacteria in their saliva that means that they scare the crap out of me.

 

I don't mind snakes at all but anything with more than 4 legs totally gives me the creeps, the creeps go up proportionately to the number of legs it has. One of the advantages to living in a cold climate is less of the creepy crawlers.

 

Same. Bees and Wasps can really creep the hell out of me...especially when they get inside the house, and I casually notice them just sitting there like its no big deal.

Also, mice aren't the most terrifying creature on the planet but when trying to fall asleep, the sound of those things scurrying through the attic and scratching at the walls was so fucking unnerving.