Creepy Crawlies

Was there a point in our history that giant insects and spiders besieged us? It might be easy to imagine so given the level of fear these little beasties of the animal kingdom bring to us. Then again, some of the biting and stinging ones would give good enough reason to be leery them. Anyone who has ever been stung by a bunch of hornets over and over would certainly deserve their fear. Such things aside, is there anything beyond weirdness of form that leaves people afraid of the creepy crawlies?

Certainly as far as appearances go, insects and spiders represent something very different than other animals that we see. Their designs are foreign to us; multiple limbs, hard shells, strange or multiple eyes, and the aforementioned stingers and fangs, and let's not forget antennae. For the longest time these creatures had to represent the unknown as much as anything, and we know fear of the unknown is the worst.

Knowledge of the workings of the anatomy and even the thought processes of insects and spiders has not lessened the fear any. One area of knowledge about them has actually made the fear worse. The fact that we know they can be carriers of terrible diseases, and be the cause of other forms of sickness hasn't waylaid anyone's bad impressions of them.

This is added to the fact that in some ways insects have been competitors in the food arena, in that at least they love to eat the things that we do. Anyone who has ever opened a box of cereal from the cupboard and found a hundred or more ants running among the flakes knows this all too well. This all leads back to the original hypothesis, or a parallel of it. There is one type of actual besieging, the locust swarm devouring the crop fields. Seeing that firsthand must be quite the horror, a living cloud, hard bodies blotting out the sun, scouring the land, leaving it barren...

Mood: springy
Music: Be the Ball by Slash's Snakepit and One Tin Soldier by Me First & the Gimme Gimmes.

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