That's *got* to be photoshopped! But I'm forwarding it on to my entomologist wife anyway.

Eww! It's covered with eggs and mites?

Oh dear God. It looks like the head of a toothbrush that's been left sitting in scummy water for far too long, thus evolving with bacteria into a kind of horror toothbrush from hell.

DON'T LET IT CRAWL INTO YOUR MOUF! IT'LL EAT YOUR TEEF!

I thought they were symbiotes, but eggs/larvae sounds possible, too.

Whatever it is, it looks like it took a beating.

Why did I look? You warned me not to look. And yet I looked. Why did I look?

Have you Asked MeFi?

Wife says "it looks like a cicada that's been (over)parasitized by wasps (parasitic wasps lay their eggs on a host; the eggs then hatch & burrow into the live insect, feeding on it"

Same as occhiblu. I chose to look. I was ready for a crab or insect. I was not ready for the mucousy sheen of those eggs. Right away there could be no more looking.

danostuporstar: awesome! thanks a lot.

poor cicada though :\

Wife says "it looks like a cicada . . .

I agree. Poor thing. It even looks sad.

MonkeyButter, are you the person I once saw posting something about being an entomologist who now works as an ecologist? When I read that, I thought for a second that my wife had become a bunny without telling me.

HeHeHe. No. But I am a Cicada lover. My area is herbaceous plants.

Im an ecologist who now works as an entomologist.

ew, stynxno, that's gross!

feh, boys.

I know this makes me bad, but I kind of hate most of the insect kingdom.

Ladybugs excepted.

You're not bad Scody. Not many humans enjoy the thought of insects crawling all over them, waking up with roaches in our ears, or having spiders crawl into our mouths and noses. Most bugs even look VERY alien and who knows what they'll do?!

Oh, and have you ever watched a ladybug eat its' prey? You might want to see that.

I'm not squeamish about most bugs, but a few just make me want to run and hide. Ikkyu had told me we had potato bugs around here, and from my midwestern upbringing I knew that potato bugs were rolypoly armadillo-like things that looked totally harmless, so no big problem.

Then the other night I'm sitting on the couch reading and this unholy mix of giant queen ant, giant termite, and giant alien OMG IT'S GOING TO EAT YOUR HEAD crawls out from under the couch, and I just started screaming.

Apparently Westerners and Midwesterners disagree on the definition of potato bug. Stupid Westerners. I'm going to have to start learning Latin names.

woodlice (potato bugs) are cute. Coloradans call 'em "roly-polies".

and holy fuck yeah, that jerusalem cricket thing? KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

don't even get me started on the earwigs and house centipedes at chez lfr. squick-o-rama!

Reminds me of a Suriname toad.

I'm usually not very squeamish about bug and stuff either, but ew ew ew that's GROSS!

I thought I would share one last moment on this thread with the one bug that will ALWAYS freak me out. Here is a Dobson Fly. They are common in New England.
DO NOT CLICK the image links if you are easily freaked-out.

Not sure I want to click on MonkeyButter's link.

As I was viewing the above, Mr. V chose the wrong moment to look over at my screen. All I heard beside me was, "Oh, that's disgusting."

Made me giggle.

OKAY, I CLICKED THE LINK. BAD VIXEN, VERY BAD!!! YOU WERE WARNED!!!

Well, I laughed out loud at the Dobson fly. What's that, some movie prop or something? Ha! Try to fool us!

It's totally real. The second photo should be captioned, "I see what you did there."

Monkeybutter's looks like something out of Them!. I grew up calling occhiblu's a sowbug.

Dobson fly

That's a FLY? Jeebus, it's big enough to need FAA clearance to take off.

ohgodohgodohdogohgod MonkeyButter.

*shudders*

shit, MonkeyButter, now I won't sleep for a week, 'preciate it.

Well, since we're talking about bugs and freakin' out, let me tell y'all about my morning.

We have a set of these 1950s type aluminum tumblers that we use daily... in fact we both use one as both dinner drink and bedside table drink for about a week at a time, esp. since we only ever drink water out of them.

Last night I didn't sleep well, and I woke up several hours before alarm time, and drank all the water in my cup, then laid back down and sort of snoozed for an hour or so.

I got up when I could tell I wasn't going to sleep anymore. This was about 5 AM. I thought, "I'll check email and then jump in the shower, and I'll be on time for a change."

I took my cup to the fridge, filled it with ice water from our Brita pitcher, then came down here to the computer. No lights were on in the house, so it was damn dark except for the glow from the computer screen.

I sat the cup right where my beer is right now. I started typing and surfing and whatnot and I heard a small sound... *ping* *ploosh*

It sounded like an ice cube cracking and rolling over in your drink. But I knew I didn't have any ice in my drink, only ice water.

I looked in my cup, and there was a HUGE camel cricket lying on its back in my ice water, swimming frantically upside down, trying to get out. I have no idea where it was or how the hell it managed to ring my cup of water, but I yelled loud enough to freak the cats, and clapped a coaster on top of the cup to keep it from righting itself. Then I did the heebie-jeebie dance. ARGH. All I wanted was to have some water and check my email in the wee hours... is that so much to ask?

Apparently. The offender was flushed away and I'm thinking about locking the cats in the den for the night. They love bouncy little bugs, unlike me.

Ah, hello special-k.

BP, i am not clicking on that link because i am already all skeeved out because i know what a camel cricket looks like.

Ew.
My first night in the south i was attacked by a giant flying roach that promptly disappeared behind my pillow. It's how Georgia says aloha.

*cries at all the bug links*

BP, at least it wasn't a bot fly larvae.

Pink to the rescue!
≡ Click to see image ≡

I believe it's one of these: Giant Water Bug (or toe-biter, apparently). See also What's That Bug?.

Yeah, good news for the cicada. The wife happened to be looking through a field guide and, wolfdog is right, its a water bug and those are her *own* eggs not wasp eggs.