Giant (and edible) pillbug

[mello-yellow]

For those of you who do not know, pillbugs, also known as sowbugs, are half-inch long segmented critters you find under every wet rock in New England. They are neither insects nor millepeds, but isopods, an order within class Crustacea. Before you run off to find and taste one -- don't! People had tried, and they taste like kerosene. (Which makes me wonder, how does anyone know what kerosene tastes like? Perhaps same people who attempt eating pillbugs... ) OTOH, order Isopoda has much larger AND TASTIER marine species:

http://www.bio.psu.edu/cold_seeps/foodisop.html

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/02mexico/logs/oct13/media/isopod.html

On the list of "things to do before I die": Eat a giant isopod!

 

[gfisher4792]

Kerosene? Tasting rollie pollies must have started during a drunk "I dare you" of some kind.

 

[DrSteve]

I'm not saying lobsters look pretty, but those things look so absolutely gross I doubt I could knowingly eat one!

 

[RIOceanographer]

My question is how did the person eating the pill bugs know what kerosene tastes like?

 

[Damselfish]

well, taste and smell are closely connected and they probably know what it smells like.

 

[SueMermaid]

Why eat a pillbug when you have a Trader Joe's nearby?

 

[ScubaNorth]

My two year old daughter picked up a container of gas mix (the little oil bottle), and when I told her to put it down because it was poison she looked at we cool as can be and said "I like poison it's spicy" dropped the container and walked away. I am sure there are others out there like her that have drank kero/gasoline and other stuff. But I really want to know who was hungry enough to eat one of those ugly little suckers. The good news is she's afraid of bugs, so we just have to lock up the chemicals not the gardens.

 

[mello-yellow]

But I really want to know who was hungry enough to eat one of those ugly little suckers.

It was not hunger. They just found out pillbugs are crustaceans, and... made an unfounded assumption.

 

[ScubaNorth]

It was not hunger. They just found out pillbugs are crustaceans, and... made an unfounded assumption.

As A rule I do not eat anything uglier than myself, lobster just make it, pillbugs fell just on the no eating side of that rule.

 

[H2Andy]

me: what are yoU?

pillbug: duh

me: dang, you're as rude as you are ugly

pillbug: *shrug*

me: you do not fear Red Lobster, do you?

pillbug: what, me worry?