Wednesday, June 25, 2008

If You Don't Can Food at Home, You Should Start Now

Strange title you're thinking right? Well I'm here to tell you canning has saved my life. At least the main ingredient, aside from the food, did this morning. Any good canner knows she has to have jars, lids and rings. Lots of them. You should always have empty ones until canning season is over. Boy am I ever glad I had some this morning.

It started off as usual. Get the child up dress and eat breakfast. Take her to summer camp and drop the dog off at the groomers (who proceeds to tell me he's overgrown. Duh that's why I brought him to you). I come home to await the plumber. I'm glad the plumber came when he did, or I could have been overtaken. I show the plumber the bathroom in need of repair. I"m standing there talking to him when movement catches my eye. I move and look down in time to see a bug move right out from under where I was standing and drop onto my stairs. First instinct is to scream, but I had 2 strange men in the house so not an option. I look at it while my mind is thinking "what is that, where did it come from since we had the house sprayed a few weeks ago and finally omg we could have stepped onto that thing during our 1:30am potty break and trip to the kitchen for a drink" I whipped into action thinking when I call the exterminator, he'll want to see it. So of course my first thought was a mason jar! Nothing could get through that! I avoided the bug ran downstairs grabbed what I needed and ran back up to scoop the bug into the jar. I did this all without notice from the plumber, until I put the lid on. Then they noticed. They were impressed too, but didn't know what it was.

Now I know what you are thinking. It's just a bug, whats to be afraid of? Why didn't you just step on it? Well, normally I would have but you see this was not a normal bug. I can handle roaches, spiders, ants etc. Those are small. I don't deal with things that could take a bite out of me. Plus if I didn't kill it with the first step I might just make it madder at me. So I took a picture for you all to see. Please feel free to comment on what you think it might be or how you would have handled it. SO without further adieu:


The pictures aren't great, but keep in mind this is a standard wide mouth pint mason jar. Notice the bug takes up half the space on the bottom. I couldn't get a good close up picture, and I was risking my life taking the lid off for the last shot. I think it might be some kind of water bug maybe but have no idea. It had legs and antennae half the length of its body and it looked like 2 sets of little pinchers maybe. I dunno. I just glad I ran into it during the day instead of last night. So if you don't can go get some jars at least. They may save your life!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um, I dunno. Ick. It's definitely a beetle. You could try googling purple (well, it looks purple in the picture) beetle 2 inches (lol) South Carolina and see what comes up. But then again, you might not want to google it. They have lots of pictures of really scary (but fascinating) bugs out there.

Glad you caught it. *shudder*

Anonymous said...

LOL, or you could be like me. Grab the biggest, heaviest pair of boots you can find, and smash the bejaybers out of the thing. And smash it and smash it and smash it until it's no longer recognizable.

You should see me with spiders.

smartbutnotwise said...

Yeah I try not to google things like that. I did that once when I had chigger bites. I regretted it
8o)

Anonymous said...

That one must have migrated from Florida.