#i am TERRIFIED of bees wasps and related bugs

[toxicanaconda]

Hey yall i just had a 15 minute stand off with a big ass wasp in my room hows ur night goin

[timeisacephalopod]

Drunk Buys

Random WinterIron crack AU for reasons lol.

Tony walks into the living room with a large box in his hands and perches in Bucky’s lap. “Babe, we need to have a talk about you drunk buying things because I have no fucking clue why the hell you bought what is in this box,” he says.

Natasha’s head whips up, “what’s in the booooox?” she asks in a surprising imitation of Brad Pitt and Tony resents the fact that she and Bucky made him watch that fucking movie.

“A replica of Gwyneth Paltro’s head,” he says without missing a beat.

Bucky looks surprised and leans over the box’s edge, “really?” he asks, curiosity written on his features.

“No Bucky, why the fuck would you buy something like that?” Though he shouldn’t be surprised at this point. For some reason he bought one thousand communion crackers and he’s Jewish, not Catholic. They still have a good three hundred of them left because they’re fucking tired of eating Jesus. Or at least he thinks that’s how that works, but either way they taste like cardboard and none of them want any more of them.

“He bought a pink kitty fur suit once, why are we shocked?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow.

“We agreed never to speak of that of the fifteen hundred dildos again,” Bucky says, looking haunted. Like he has the right, all those dildos showing up to Tony’s house brought actual media attention and Natasha made a bunch of memes about it that got really popular. But then that shouldn’t surprise him either considering she’s gotten so good at making memes she got them banned in Russia.

“Did he order some dumb shit online again? Ban him from booze,” Sam says, walking into the living room and shaking his head. 

“But then who would bring us these wonderful gifts?” Bucky asks, wide eyed.

Tony sighs, “honey, do you even remember what you bought?” he asks. Bucky stares at the box for a long few moments.

“I don’t remember getting drunk to be honest,” he says eventually. “But I have a bad memory. I know I know your middle name but I can’t remember that either.” Yeah, Tony thinks that’s for the best now that Edward is attached to sparkly vampires that abuse so he leaves it.

“You should maybe not drink. I mean you once sent your ex a 3D printed model of your ass with a sticky note attached that said ‘suck on this’. That barely even makes sense,” he points out.

Sam laughs, “ah, the rare time he mails things instead of having things mailed to him. Remember when he set up that automatic mailing system to send his fifth grade teacher a copy of his degree every day for the rest of her life because she told him he’d never make it anywhere in life? I remember that because that’s the moment he proved her right,” Sam says, pleased with his insult.

Bucky flips him off but Sam pays no attention to that. “Remember when you bought Sam twelve falcons? Or spent a thousand dollars on a bunch of ant farms for Scott? I still don’t know who that is,” Tony says. “But that time you bought ten parrots and sent them to Hammer with a note that read ‘they’re trained to mock’ is probably one of the funniest I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing,” he says.

“Scott’s the guy that’s got a kid,” Nat says like that helps him any.

“I thought that was May. I am I missing something? I thought the kid’s dad was dead?” Or was it his uncle? Well shit, he can’t just ask Peter which family members of his bit the fucking dust, that’s rude.

“No, Scott has his own kid. Cassie,” Bucky says.

Tony frowns. “Well I know which kid you’re talking about now, but I thought she was Clint’s... The fuck is that new one of his named then?” 

“Nathaniel because the little fucker came out a boy and ruined naming it after me,” Natasha says, obviously bitter about this. Tony thinks the baby has won there though.

He shakes his head. “Whatever, I’ll figure Scott out later. Point is you have a problem and we can’t continue to eat Jesus every time you get sad drunk. We’ve probably eaten like five Jesus’ by now.”

Natasha starts laughing and Sam sighs. “You know when those moments happen and you think ‘if someone heard this out of context they’d think we’re nuts’. Well that’s most of the interactions I have with you people. I’d say its white people but T’Challa and Rhodey do it too. Like come on man, black people aren’t furries,” he says, shaking his head. Tony laughs because he’s ninety percent sure T’Challa has no idea what a furry even is let alone how that relates to being Black Panther but Sam’s inability to get past it is hilarious.

“I think its kind of a fun quirky trait,” Bucky says, grinning a little.

Tony sighs, “honey. Consider this box and your lack of knowledge on what’s in this box. You should probably ban yourself from the computer when drunk.”

“It’s not that bad,” Bucky says in his own defense, giving Tony that sad, puppy dog look that really does make him want to scoop Bucky up and kiss him better. Not that he does because that’s enabling.

“Bucky bee, Buzzfeed has written listicles of weird shit you’ve boughten when drunk. You have a problem with drunk online shopping. Remember the five life sized Daleks you bought because you thought they were cute and you’ve never even heard of the show Doctor Who?” Because he does. Two of them are in his bedroom and he’d rather they leave because they give him nightmares with the creepy shadows they cast.

“Hold up,” Sam says, holding his hand in the air. “Did you just call him ‘Bucky bee’?”

Tony frowns, “yeah?” he asks, unsure why this is unusual when he gives everyone weird nicknames. He called Sam ‘birdman’ for over a year until Clint got annoyed because before Sam he was the only one who was referenced by birds and then he called to Sam’s nicknames too. So now Sam is the annoying little brother and Clint is the boring father. Neither like their reassessments but they both admit that it’s better than Rhodey’s platypus.

“Get the hell out of this house,” Sam says and Tony squints.

“This is my house,” he points out.

“Its my house now if you’re going to call people gay ass shit like that,” Sam says.

He frowns, “that’s homophobic.”

“Doesn’t count when you’re bisexual, die mad about it and out of my newly acquired home thanks to you saying dumb shit.”

“That’s what he’s going to lose his house over? Not that he thought minimum wage was the same as a living wage?” Nat asks.

“Okay in my defense that makes sense! What the hell is the wage minimuming if its not going into poverty? Now its just ‘weird arbitrary number some rando politician shit out’. Its not my fault I’m logical,” Tony says in his own defense.

“Why is there a taxidermy bat in here?” Bucky asks, pulling the bat out of the box on Tony’s lap. “Oh what the fuck, there’s a rat and an alligator too. And what the hell is that?” he asks. Tony looks in the box and sighs.

“Goat skull. This is why I think you have a problem. You think taxidermy is the work of the devil and yet here it is, sitting in my lap.” Bucky pulls out some more tissue paper and frowns for a moment, leaning into the box and letting out a loud shriek before he shoves Tony and the box off his lap.

Tony lets out an undignified squawk and falls to the ground, watching as Bucky’s weird drunk trinkets fall out. When he spots the spider though he jumps back into Bucky’s lap at a speed faster than anything he knew himself to be capable of. “I swear to fucking god if that thing is alive I’m leaving you!” he shrieks, ignoring how high his voice is.

Natasha goes over and scoops up the spider, “nope. Not alive,” she reports not that Tony relaxes. He’s maybe picked up some bug fear from Rhodey, who is genuinely terrified of all things insect and most things reptile. He says if it has too many legs or not enough legs it ain’t right. His threshold if four legs and that’s mostly only because he likes dogs otherwise it’d be two.

“Oh hey, I remember why I bought that stuff,” Bucky says excitedly. “Steve was pissing me off so I bought all the things he feared and planned on sticking them in his bed.”

Sam, who seems to like this idea, starts gathering Bucky’s fallen drunk buys back into the box. “What? He’s been pissing me off lately. He can deal with a bat or two in his pillow.”

“I think you’re evil,” Bucky tells him in a low tone.

“It was your idea, dipshit, you’re the evil one,” Sam points out.

“Gunna take that spider?” Tony asks and Sam snorts.

“Fuck no, those things have no right to look like that. They don’t need that many eyes or that many legs. God made a mistake with them,” he says, giving the spider a disdainful look.

Natasha frowns, “spiders are really good for ecosystems, god made a mistake with humans given how invasive and shitty we are. Spiders are good, you leave them alone,” she says, holding the creepy tarantula to her chest.

“I think god made a mistake with wasps and Sam,” Bucky says.

“Please stop drunk buying things I have heart problems and I can’t handle finding more spiders in boxes,” Tony says.

Something must occur to Bucky then because he turns to Sam wide eyed, “you might want to get home before Steve does,” he says but leaves the ominous warning at that.

[cargothrowjumpcargoupthrowu-blog]

A memoir about maggots

“Golly gee, I sure do love me some maggots!”

 That’s a line I’ve said unironically a couple of times in my life. Well, I guess it’s a little ironic, more of an half irony, but that’s just because I really find the phrase ‘Golly gee’ to be one of the funniest sounds that can escape a mouth. I really do love me some maggots. I’ve had to raise enough in the lab that eventually I had to find them cute a little. Maybe give an especially fat one a cute name. Like, Reginald.

 Hi, my name is Joe, and I study bugs. It’s normal, I swear.

 I always hear that it’s so “amazing”, but it’s not. People want to know what I find so interesting about insects, and I can’t really give a straight answer, and that’s just because I don’t ever understand the question. If a girl has “LOVES DOGS 😍😍😍” in her tinder bio, you don’t question it. It’s a fact of life. Everyone loves dogs. But when I put “Run away with me to Argentina so we can get infested with Bot Fly larvae together” in my tinder bio, all I get on tinder is not a single match. For me, insects are just another dog, or dolphin, or alpaca. Whenever people want to know what I find so interesting about insects, all I can wonder is how they don’t find them so interesting. Like, you should know what makes insects so interesting. They go through metamorphosis! They can fly! They have an exoskeleton! They come in a variety of colors and shapes and sizes, so there’s one everyone can love, so even if you’re not a fly guy like I am, you can still love beetles or roaches or mantises. They’re the most abundant thing on the planet, there is one you will find cute.

The next question I get, in the series of, “generic questions I always get whenever I mention my fondest for six-legged friends” is always “so what made you interested in bugs?”, and just like the first one, I don’t really have an answer. I mean, I guess I always found bug type Pokemon to be the coolest looking Pokemon. If anybody can look at Beedrill and tell me that the giant bee with stingers for hands isn’t bad ass, then I don’t think I can get be their friend. Continuing the trend of video game influences, in Starcraft I always played as the Zerg, a living swarm of insect like creatures from space, outfitted with carapaces and cocoons and all the other things that makes most people uncomfortable when they think about bugs. And when you’re talking about insect looking aliens, you can’t forget just how cool the Alien from Alien looks? Unrelated to pop culture, I remember in high school I did a project on man-made pesticides, which is kind of tangentially related to insects? Heck, I owned Pixars’ ‘A Bugs Life’ on VHS, that must be why! There are so many small influences throughout my life that I’m surprised it took me until college for me to realize that I love bugs.

Unfortunately, there is one moment that is etched in my mind forever. It’s not a pretty moment, but I guess most moments involving bugs aren’t. Picture a warm Sunday afternoon in the spring. The windows are open, the birds are singing, and you’ve got your whole day ahead of you. Now picture a young fifteen year old Joe, still a nerdy fat ass, fresh out of the shower and wrapped in a towel, the sheet the only thing separating my young supple body from the outside world. Actually, don’t picture that. I’m sure that’s not enjoyable for anyone. Anyway, there I was, in the most vulnerable state I’ve ever been. My guard was down. I plopped onto my bed, content to laze my afternoon away, when in through the window strolls a giant sphecid wasp. Sphecid wasps, for those not in the know, are thread-waisted wasps, which means they have giant elongated bulb shaped abdomens just dangling from their bodies. The have a look that’s not just intimidating, but also pure alien. So I hope those of you that hate bugs can understand when I admit that in my exposed state, I laid completely still in my bed, and just watched this bug float around in my room in sheer terror. For an hour. For that hour, this wasp owned my room. I was cuckolded by that wasp. I was terrified of that thing. I was the inspiration for the hit television show, Naked and Afraid.

Eventually, after having desecrated the sanctity of my own safe space and deciding that I was worthy to live another day, the wasp sauntered out of my room, as casually as it had entered. Eventually, I was able to identify it. It was a potter wasp. Completely harmless to humans. The only confirmed kills they have are when their nests were identified as the cause of an airplane crash, which I guess is still scary? But not enough to make you cower in fear for an hour.

That’s probably the biggest event I can name when it came to my formation as the handsome bug loving man I am today. And it’s embarrassing, and anticlimactic. Movies and stories have told us that important life moments are supposed to be earth shaking, gigantic revelations, and there’s supposed to be like, a John Williams score or something. Most of the time though, that’s how life is. It’s the smallest, inconsequential stuff that ends up having the biggest impact. Like, how if I didn’t get stood up at a date, I doubt I would’ve ended up doing improvisational comedy. Or how getting roped into a fantasy football league at the last minute would lead me to realize that I have a gambling problem.

I guess they all can’t be winners, huh?