13 comments

  1. I used to play with those as a kid. Never by the thousands, but one or two maybe.

    When I talk to furrin people that come visit us over here, they seem to mostly be afraid of our crime rates. Not that our crime rate is any higher than theirs, but it gets sensationalized by the media (for obvious reasons). Also, most street smart Americans can generally tell a nice neighborhood from one plagued by crime, just by looking at it. Thus we typically know where to go and when in order to minimize our risk.

    That’s just one example, but I think the lesson here is, don’t believe everything you see sensationalized by the media.

    1. > Not that our crime rate is any higher than theirs,

      I dunno where you live, but I spent two years in Alice Springs, and it wasn’t that the crime rate was higher there, although it was compared to an American city of that size, it’s that the bastards would break in WHILE YOU WERE HOME and if they got caught they got sent to Juvie for 6 months, then back to out to do whatever.

      Two “kids” (12 and 14) broke into our house at 2 in the morning. My wife thought it was Spawn getting up and wandering around, so went to put her back to bed. Got a sub-orbital fracture when one of them hit her while trying to get out of the house.

      I liked the country, and some of the people (to be fair, I only like “some of the people” here, so that’s not a slight on Aussies), but your laws concerning self defense truly suck.

      1. my laws suck or your laws suck? Here in America if they’re in the house, we shoot. Sucks for them, not me.

  2. Ah yes, I know these – they’re called Cheese Logs here in the Royal County. (AKA wood lice, pill bugs WTAFC). Likewise Daddy Long legs, midges and lady birds – we have lots of those! . Another quaint Brit naming thing. This time not a food ( e.g. Welsh Rarebit; which is neither rare nor has any rabbits – stargaze pie (contains no stars), laverbread (yup, no bread involved) or chicken tikka masala (Brit, not Indian, food).

  3. Kim, I had to read the text to see what was happening. I thought the vid was Democrats after some Government Lefty said, “It’s OK to loot!”

  4. Never heard the name “Slater bugs” before, but they’re common here in Texas. I’ve always heard them called roly-polies or pillbugs. Guess you have to go to AU to see them swarm like that though.

    1. We have them in the moister parts of Southern California. I’d heard them referred to as Sow Bugs.

  5. It being Oz, we need to know how big these bugs are. Are they the tiny guys we call pill bugs in Texas or are they huge, maybe the size of shrimp? If they are huge, this may be a sign of a benevolent God who wishes his flock in Australia to have an adequate protein supply in the coming famine.
    What’s a good recipe for Slater bug on the barbie?

    1. We’d need to ask the Digger Indians of Central California east of the Sierra Nevada to find out if they are edible. They wound up in such a barren place, they’d eat anything they could.

    2. Slater bugs, like all terrestrial isopods, are actually a type of crustacean known as a malacostracan. Other malacostracans are crabs, lobsters, shrimp, crayfish, prawns, krill, and other less-known critters. Just based off the list of their cousins, I would guess that, so long as there is enough meat to make it worth the effort, you could boil them and then eat them with butter or cocktail sauce.

  6. Using the diameter of some of the brush in the image, those look at least 3/4″ to 1″ in size. Here they barely make more than 1/4 to 3/8 of an inch and move a heck of a lot slower, unless that is sped up video.
    Being Australia, have to ask if these are poisonous, ours here are not.

    1. They’re harmless.

      The video is definitely sped up.

      Most are about the same size as yours; never seen one longer than about 3/8″.

      We just call them “Slaters”.

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