We live in a fairly wooded neighborhood. 

Who am I kidding… We live in a woods.  Even the name of my street has “Woodland” in it.

Anyway, the picture over here looks harmless enough, but they are creepy ass bugs.  The picture I have here is just a nymph, kind of like a pre-teen version of the bug, not quite as creepy looking as the ones I have walking around at my house right now on the deck.  The bastards even have the balls to hang out on my gnomes.  You know, now that I mention it, I’ve never talked about my love of yard gnomes, that’s for another blog post I think.

Back to the bugs.  I finally did a little research to figure out what they were today and I’m officially creeped out, but now I know what yet another bug is in my yard, it’s the adult version of this bastard:

From what I read, these guys can bite if you piss them off, and I am assuming they are quick to anger as I was trying to get a picture of it and it stood up on it’s hind legs and showed me it’s nasty little poker thing.

Anyway…  Now my skin is all creepy crawley.  I don’t think the pictures do it justice as for how disturbing these bugs are.  To call them prehistoric is a pretty good description.

Here’s another site (where I found most of these images) with some info about them:  Wheel Bugs

So, now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.