Never smile at a ladybug

Sometimes I want to write, but nothing of interest feeds through my little pea brain, so I'm left bereft with little more than useless, time-wasting, blog-cluttering sentences (which turn into paragraphs), a little like the one you're currently being subjected to.  And sometimes a tiny, inconsequential ladybug can trigger an avalanche of amazing, mind-blowing, mind-boggling blog content.  Alas, I'm afraid that's not going to happen today.

It turns out that I did actually see an itty bitty ladybug today, as opposed to those mammoth ones you see stomping loudly and violently through Amazonian rainforests via David Attenborough.  If you haven't seen them then you really need to sign up for the National Geographic channel and enlighten yourself to the world of these scary, polka-dotted savages.

Whilst viewing said ladybug today, I wondered to myself - as one naturally does - if the ladybug is non-threatening to me because it is polka-dotted, thus fairly comical, or if it's scarylessness has evolved from the fact that we call it a LADYBUG.  And then it occurred to me (very slow traffic lights) that maybe this is the root of the huntsman's unpopularity; the darn things have a PR crisis. 

So I was thinking that if perhaps we renamed the huntsman 'Mr Scarylegs', they wouldn't be so terrifying to me.  Hmm, or perhap that wouldn't help much at all.  I still remember thousands of years ago, when the little arachnids used to terrify me as I drove out of my cave's garage for a hard day of hunting and gathering at Costco, so it's pretty hard-wired in there.

I have had arachnophobia - huntsman specific - for a fairly long time.  I am fucking petrified of them.  Yes, I know I can fix it by systemic desensitisation, and yes I know that my fear is irrational, and yes I know that it is absolutely not rational to keep tongs by your mailbox to fetch the post, and yes I know that it's a little weird, if not completely screwed up, to not allow furniture to touch your walls.  It seems the one thing I do having going for me in phobialand is self-awareness.  

I know what you're thinking, that a huntsman wouldn't hurt a fly, but we both know that's not strictly true, don't we?  They friggin' devour flies.  And, yes, I know they keep away other wall-dwelling bugs, burglars and probably extraterrestrial life from mars, but I have a phobia, fool, so shush.