The Highly Flammable Adventures Of GSL (was GSL vs. Bugs)

It all started when I walked to my bedroom sink to prepare a fresh pot of coffee tomorrow, when I saw one of these sitting in my sink:


Known as the crane fly, they are completely harmless, but scare the bejeesus out of me on account of looking like a GIANT mosquito. I'm talking to AntiPasta at the time, and he suggests going on the offensive, which I proceed to do, using this:


As some of you no doubt know, when a can of compressed air is held upside down, it produces freezing blasts of supercooled air which supposedly can result in frostbite if applied to skin for too long. Just think of what it could do with fragile scary bug bodies.

After an epic battle of flying around and spraying air everywhere, my scary nemesis was lying thoroughly frosted in the sink. Anti suggested I finish the thing off with a lighter. Indulging in a moment of sadism, I agreed and set off back to the sink with lighter in tow, like a little kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. I do strange things at 5:45 am.

I currently have no hair on the underside of my right wrist. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but there is no hair, and I was luckily able to shut off the smoke alarm. I placed the lighter in the sink near the bug and gave the igniter a flick, and the whole sink exploded in a fireball. I'm guessing that A) That compressed air stuff is really dense and doesn't clear away easily, B) They need to change the fucking label that says "This product is not classified as flammable, but under certain circumstances may ignite" to something like "WARNING!!! YOU ARE RETARDED AND WILL BLOW UP YOUR ARM! THIS IS VERY FLAMMABLE!!", and C) I'm stupid and deserved that.

So aside from a bare lower arm, smelling of scorched hair, and having a deathly fear of lighters, compressed air, sinks, and crane flies, I'm fine, but thought you guys might get a laugh out of my stupiditiy.

 

Quality!

Pop fact:

The crane fly (or "Daddy Longlegs" in the UK, don't ask me why) has one of the most potent venoms known outside of the spider genus. Sadly, not having a mouth there is no reason to fear a deadly bite.

 

Hmm...I think the crane fly and Daddy Longlegs are two different things...as we have a spidery looking thing that we call a Daddy Longlegs, but it has no wings...unlike this Crane Fly (Which I've never heard of by the way)

Oh, and about their vemom being the most poisonous...

Theres a show on TV here called Mythbusters, where they bust popular myths using science, and experiment...

On an episode of Mythbusters I saw, they, with the help of a guy who studies spiders, and some venom extractors proved that the Venom of a Daddy Longlegs is absolutely harmless. It's an intersting show.

 

yeah I remember that they have just enough poison to make a small red dot on your arm... :smt043 I love Mythbusters!!

 

http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/daddylonglegs.html

edit: sorry i forgot to say your all wrong :butthead:

 

Sounds to me like that compressed gas was a bit explosive :smt040

Thankfully your alright.

 

I think half the confusion is a result of regional slang terms. Pants in America is of the trouser Variety, while in the UK they are underwear (shortened version of underpants). So nobody is really right or wrong, it just depends where you are from. I didn't know (obviously) about the poison thing though, I shall have to take that up with David Attenborough if I ever see him!

 

If iot's any consolation i just had a bath and didnt notice the dead spider in th ebath with me lol

 

:smt043 GreatSaintLouis, you're the man :smt043

:smt043 Too many things making me laugh today.

The other day I saw a massive spider that was easily the size of my hand. I sh!t my pants when I saw it !! I bloody hate spiders. Also last year there was a mutant spider living in the tunnel not far from here. It was the same type of spider that can be seen in Japan every summer but this one was 5 times bigger than the others. It's boody was atleast 7cm long and shaped as an oval with black and green thick stripes. It's legs could span my handf with out any effort at all. Needless to say that I kept well away from it. The crazy thing is that it lived all the way in to December !!! All other spiders were dead by the begining of November.

Yakumo

 

GSL: Sorry for inciting you to blow up half your appartment :smt043
Your valiant deeds in the persecution of vile craneflies will not be forgotten.
/me salutes you :smt040

:smt043 :smt043 :smt043

 

Tachikoma: Yeah, I think you've gotten the American and the European versions of the daddy longlegs mixed up. My nemesis from last night, the crane fly, is apparently daddy longlegs, however, the daddy longlegs we know here is the non-spider arachnid that like you said, is supposed to be one of the most venomous insects in the world, but it's mouth is too small to bit things.

In case anyone's confused, the daddy longlegs as we know him here:


They never seemed to bother me much. I'm usually pretty good with most insects, except the really creepy ones, like those DAMN CRANE FLIES that keep getting in my room, or Jerusalem crickets, or things like that. Spiders don't do that much for me even.

Oh, I just woke up, and the good thing is that my arm no longer smells like vaporized hair. I still refuse to go anywhere near that fireball-spewing sink, though.

The morals of the story: If someone says something is not flammable, they're a flaming liar, no pun intended. Everything in the world catches fire or explodes. Use this knowledge to your advantage. Also, when touching off exploding sinks, use one of those long barbecue lighters so you don't burn yourself, and know how to disable your fire alarm.

:smt043 :smt043

 

Unlike you GSL who puts bugs on fire. I'm more like Sadam Hussein when it comes to killing bugs, but this was back when I was little, because I used chemicals (no not RAID, stuff that can kill people too). My stepdad worked with a pest control company and my uncle (who was living with us at the time) was a pool cleaner. So our garage was filled with chemicals that had enough explosive potentia energy that could bring down a sky scraper.

One time I remember when I was a kid, I was playing outside minding my own business when all of a sudden I got attacked by some vicious red ants, the BIG ones. I went inside, poured vinegar on the bites so they don't swell up. Then I took a gallon of industrial chlorine that was in my garage (100% pure chlorine used to clean pool systems). I was smart enough to get one of the gas masks and put it on correctly before I opened up the bottle, which was also heavy for me because I was about 6-years old. So anyway, I took this to where the mound was, hit it with a stick so that every single ant comes out to kill whatever destroyed their kingdom. I quickly poured about half of the bottle on the whole mound. I heard a sizziling and smoke come from where I poured the chlorine. I ran back inside to put back the bottle and then went back outside and got the hose to hose down the chlorine to cover-up what I did. However, stupid as I was, I was caught because not only was there a very bad smell in our back-yard that emminated into the house and neighbors house, but there is a huge bald spot of dead grass. It was funny to me and my sister before I got caught. I will never forget that time. My dad had to spread Lime in the back yard to cover up the smell of the chlorine so our neighbors wouldn't complain and get my uncle in trouble for improperly storing industrial chemicals in a house full of children :smt043 .

 

I find it pretty surprising that your whole garden didnt die out when you poured pure chlorine into the ground... I imagine the stuff can get into the groundwater.

By the way, when it comes to battling insects I'm a barbarian, I use whatever objects in my vicinity to kill them (including those crane flies, they're a pest here right now, too) - be it a NES, my pocket knife, a dead PSX, an electric car window, a piece of tape (great fun taping a gnat to the floor and seeing it sting at nothing) or my hand. I remember hacking away with my pocket knife at a gnat and I cut its head off! The odd thing was, the gnat's body kept running around in circles for minutes on end, and the head kept swinging its tentacles and jaws around like there was no tomorrow, and kept doing so for about half an hour (in fact I kept a log of it in my agenda but I cant find it now) :smt043

 

Hmm... upon further inspection I think you are right... for some reason both bugs here are referred to by the "Daddy..." name, but the spider-like version is the correct one with the poison thing as well... ah well, thats what you get for being brought up in a little backwater village, where your teacher was more interested in your female cousin than actually teaching...

 

Try dealing with the 17 year cicada here GSL...you'd end up with no limbs and most likely on life support. :smt043 At their most active during the afternoon you can take out 6 with the swing of your hand through the air....from a distance the foreground looks hazy , like fog, until you get close and realize its all of the bugs in the foreground for a couple of miles....bring more than a can of spray!! :smt027

 

LOL :smt043

I was just doing the same thing the other day. There was this fly that was bugging me so I decided to put my compressed air to good use and tried to freeze it slighyly to see if that fly plane thing(freezing a group of flies and then gluing them onto a plane and using them to fly it) is true. It didn't work and i just threw the fly away. Good thing I didn't try to burn it. :smt040

Here's a quote from my can of compressed air:

"This product is not defined as flammable by 16 CFR, 1500.3 Consumer Products Safty Commision Regulations, HOWEVER, THIS PRODUCT CAN BE IGNITED UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES."

Guess you had one of those curcumstances.

 

mutant spider? wtf... because of the nuclear bomb and radiation or what? o.0 , btw post a pic of those spiders o.0

 

They should also add: "DO NOT USE AGAINST BUGS!".

 

the daddy longlegs is called in my native language "stankelben" (the picture with the arachnid on)

the correct ame for the daddy longslegs in danish is "majer"

and the cranefly is called "stankelsbensmyg" (myg = mosquito)

so there is the connection between the two things in the danish language plus the mosquito ;-)

but i hate hornets and wasps *brrrrr* they give me the goosebumps and ants are ok in DK but still they make me get a cold shiver although i think they are an exiting insect

but hornets wasps are not my cup of tea so give me a bug killer spray.

just for the rocord i had when i was younger a collection of three very pretty living cross spiders (nonpoisonous) on my wall in there webs.

and there are VERY FEW poisonous animals in DK.