Have You Ever Seen a Creepier Creepy-Crawly Thing in Maine?

Maine has a pretty good collection of weird bugs.

I always used to watch nature shows when I was a kid on Maine Public Television. Nova and Wild America were always favorites. Especially Nova because they would show all sorts of critters from all over the world. Sometimes they were perfectly normal, like lions or whatever. But occasionally they'd head into the rain forests and that's where the fun always began.

I was always fascinated by the size of the giant spiders or huge moths the size of your head or whatnot. As I got older and simply looked around my back yard, I realized we had plenty of peculiarities right here in Maine. Ever seen a toe biter? Or a luna moth? How about a cicada? All pretty weird looking if you've never seen one.

But seriously... this creepy-crawly takes the cake.

I saw a video posted on the Maine Wildlife page on Facebook the other day, and it was nuts. I'd never seen a living organism with less definition or anything living on land, never mind here in Maine. You expect weird scary stuff in the ocean with this kind of movement, but it looks wholly unnatural. Look at it!

It's called a Monkey Slug Caterpillar. Eventually as they complete their life cycle, they grow into a Hag Moth. Even the full grown moths are fun to look at. They're these big, black and grey creatures that look like they'll turn into a vampire and bite you. But really, they just wanna eat leaves and do their thing.

As you can imagine, the hairs on these buggers can cause some irritation. To the same extent as BTM caterpillars? Hard to say, as there aren't a lot of reports of a rash from the monkey slugs.

They don't seem out to cause us a lot of trouble, but wouldn't you kind of freak out if you saw what looked like a fuzzy blob crawling it's way over to you? They do have legs, nine in fact, but they don't look like it. But don't ask me to kill this thing if you see one. You're on your own, bub.

While we're on the subject...