Terrible Analogies

While channel surfing the other day I happened upon a nature show that I thought was about the majestic and often misunderstood piranha.  There they were, a glittering school of piranha gently hovering in their sepia-stained world, minding their own business when *bam*!  Ambushing from above with the speed of a hungry Haitian (too soon?) were two alien-looking appendages, quickly followed by two eyes the size of which I’ve only seen in my nightmares.

This, my friends, was the classic attack pattern of the noble Giant Water Bug:

This is the reason why I didn’t go wading into those slow, trickling streams during those Boy Scout Jamborees.  I knew, in the back of my young mind where the Boogie Man, the monsters under my bed, and WHAM! lived, that an abominable terror such as this was lurking in the shadows just below the surface, waiting for my innocent little pink toes to come within striking range of its sharpened beak and gripping exoskeleton.

Damn nature, you scary.