| Diagram of Kafka's "Vermin"? Suggested by Nabakov! |
The pill bug (also called the wood louse and the roly-poly bug) is a small, segmented land creature that can roll into a tiny ball for protection. The pill bug is NOT an insect, but is an isopod (another type of arthropod).
Habitat and Distribution: Pill bugs are common invertebrates that are found in many biomes around the world, including temperate forests, rainforests, and grasslands. They prefer moist areas, often living in soil and under decaying leaves, rocks, and dead logs.
Life Cycle: A pill bug begins its life as a tiny egg. The young pill bug looks almost like a miniature adult. As it grows, it molts (sheds its old, outgrown exoskeleton) 4 to 5 times.
Anatomy: Pill bugs are covered by a hard exoskeleton (also called the cuticle) made from chitin. They have three basic body parts, the head (which is fused to the first segment of the thorax), the thorax (the 7 segments of the thorax that are not fused to the head are called the pereon), and the abdomen (which is also called the pleon). Pill bugs have 7 pairs of jointed legs and 2 pairs of antennae (but one pair is barely visible). The antennae, mouth and eyes are located on the head. A pair of abdominal uropods are at the posterior end of the pill bug, but only the terminal exopods are visible from the top of the pill bug. Pill bugs are less than an inch long.
Diet: Pill bugs eat decaying plants and animals and some living plants
Predators: Pill bugs are eaten by many animals. Their main protection is rolling into an armored ball.
Classification: Kingdom Animalia (animals), Phylum Arthropoda, Subphylum Crustacea, Class Malacostraca, Order Isopoda (isopods), Family Armadillidiidae, Genus Armadillidium, Oniscus, etc. Many species, including A. vulgare (the common pillbug).
25 comments:
Yay! And Yay to you for being the first person to ever look at my blog! When we move to Minnesota, I will dance a foxtrot with you in appreciation.
No problem. Those pictures of Clurg McClurg on your blog...priceless!
The bug-thing is very pretty! So is Clurg!
Dude, you seriously need to take a break on the Kafka thing.
Dude, bug pictures?
Man.
Stick with the arm wrestling.
Bug blogging is the wave of the future, Michele. We are all bugs beneath Kafka's magnifying glass. AHHHHHHHH!
I'm going to try rollinginto a protective ball at work tommorow.
"Hey, I'm here to pick up my glassess...why are you in a ball on the floor?"
"Get away from me! I'm like Kafka!"
Go ahead and let me know how that works for you. I'm guessing they'll call out the shrinks.
hey, that's convenience for ya!
I could smoke this bug in a heartbeat. Gregor Samsa was not a pill bug!
I know. He was simply "vermin", which is also my pet name for the Captain. Ha ha!
Clurg is pretty, and he knows it. Also, let's keep in mind that Nabakov was totally insane (he had to be, to write 'Ada, or Ardor') and had his own, totally insane reasons for the wood louse thing. Also, he was an amateur entymologist. Personally, I think the wood louse calls for a reinterpretation of the text. (I am sick of the word 'text'). A roly-poly is cute, cockroach, not so much, unless you live in Mobile, Alabama and have Palmetto bugs, which are really giant flying cockroaches only they live in trees and don't try to eat your food.
I'm pretty.
Float like a wood louse.
When I lived in New Orleans, this one time I awakened to find a Palmetto bug sucking on a mosquito bite I had scratched open. Of course, I freaked. I got some spray foam, and some extra-evil bug poison, put on all of my clothes -- two pairs of socks, wading boots, long pants, flannel and t-shirts, a hat (and it's, of course, about 96°) -- opened up the unused cabinet below the sink, sprayed in the poison, and about five thousand Palmetto bugs came scampering and flying out of the hole at the bottom. First, I sprayed the hole full of the foam, to excess, then I got the vacuum cleaner and began sucking up Palmetto bugs all over the walls, the corners of the walls, under the bed, desk, everywhere, "thoomp," "thoomp," "thoomp," "thoomp," for a couple of hours until I couldn't find anymore, then I had a cumulative attack of the willies (cf., Gary Larson cartoon) that lasted weeks -- everytime I saw one I would just lose it -- and moved away a couple of months later.
awesome story, kelly! I can imagine all those bugs crammed together in the vaccum cleaner bag, squirming the night away.
oh, how horrible. Big bloodsucking bugs. Oh ick, oh ish.
It sucked blood? It SUCKED BLOOD? I have been a palmetto bug apologist for years, and now I learn that they are, in fact, blood-sucking freaks, only they're too lazy to puncture your skin themselves. The only time I've ever really had contact with one was when it found itself in my apartment, scared my cat, and just kind of looked at me for a few hours until I put a glass over it and a piece of paper under it and released it into the wild. But a giant flying cockroach that sucks blood? I'm getting the hell out of the South.
Actually, I threw away the whole vacuum cleaner. And then I got the hell out of the South. Although the weather up here blows, and the food ranges from "white and creamy" to "bland," and Minnesotans in general seem to seem to see mass marketing as a personal endorsement of their tastes, there are no large flying cockroaches.
whoa
I see mass marketing as an indictment of my personal taste.
Minnesotans, present company excepted.
(That post was probably a little crabbier than I meant. I can be moody.)
My post had no meaning whatsoever! I just read Cap G's post in which he used the word 'indict' and it's been rolling around my head every since.
Ceci n’est pas une post.
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I just love how many comments I've gotten from a drawing of a wood louse posted around one Am last saturday night. Maybe humanity will be all right, after all.
rejoinder
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