My thoughts on: Earwigs

I made a request for topics and you responded. And I thank you for it. high fives to you. Here is the first.

This topic was submitted by Ashley.

Earwigs are foul, but why?

Let's examine:



Just kidding, I am sorry. I google-imaged earwigs and that came up. I almost died from lameness and decided to put it here, but I think I will/do regret it.

Ok, earwigs.



I mean, it looks like a creepy bug, sure. And it has pincers, yipes. But I'm going to say that the creepiest thing about them is their name. We hear it and we automatically picture it crawling into our ears which is probably the worst possible thing one can imagine ever happening. And wig? What a strange word to pair "ear" with. I don't understand, and it makes it grosser still, somehow. Otherwise, I can think of worse bugs. This one actually looks kind of cool but maybe that's because it's on my computer screen and not in my house. I haven't had an encounter with an earwig in years. I wonder if they don't live out here.

I do remember one traumatic experience. It was the summer before 7th grade. My friend Amy and I were at the Jr. High for summer band. (This is when I really started to get cool.) We were sitting on the grass out front drinking our Sprites and we saw a milk carton stuck to a knob on a tree. I pulled off the carton and millions of earwigs came pouring out. Blargh.

In college, i took a lovely zoology class called Appreciation of Nature. It was one of my favorite classes and i remember more things from that one than probably any other. The teacher would bring in live animals and the lectures were like "Today we will talk about birds. Here are some qualities of birds. Birds are interesting because..." It was like a class for 1st graders & I loved it. Anyway, one day he said "I want you to think of the most disgusting organism. The organism you hate the most." So we all thought for several minutes. Then he said, "are there any Jennifers here?" This is how he called on someone. I raised my hand and he asked what mine was. I told him, "the earwig." He asked why, i explained that i hated the way it moved and that it was "bleahhh" (used that exact word) and he seemed amused and said, "oh yeah? interesting analysis." He then said we had to write a paper on something interesting about our loathsome organism. Nice. My paper was how symmetry in earwig forceps makes them more sexually desirable to other earwigs. He wrote on my paper, "fascinating! Come talk to me more about this" but to be honest, I didn't have much more to say.

And those are my thoughts on that.