CLOSED: What on earth is this

bug we found on our porch tonight. It tries to attack like a crab

Maybe genus Lethocerus - not at my computer now, so I can't open more than one window, but it's a giant water bug.

Perhaps Uhler's Water Bug - Lethocerus uhleri
http://bugguide.net/node/view/112408

think you nailed it. I was wondering what it was doing on my front porch when the pond is almost a football field away. It was also very agressive when we touched it with a twig.

"Individuals occur in ponds and ditches where they suspend below the surface, respiring through two abdominal appendages which act as siphons. During mating season they fly from pond to pond or pool of water. It is during these flights that these insects fly to lights in large numbers, earning their other common name, "electric light bugs". Individuals are capable of inflicting a painful bite with their strong beak, and may also pinch with their front legs. Individuals prey on aquatic insects, small fish, frogs, tadpoles, small birds, and other organisms they are able to capture. Powerful enzymes are injected into prey to kill them. Adults of Lethocerus are considered a delicacy in Asia, and are eaten both fresh and cooked. " ewwwwwwwwwwww!!

eeeewwwwwwwww!! is right!

In her Pulitzer Prize winning book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard tells of a frog's encounter with this bug:

"......At the end of the island I noticed a small green frog. He was exactly half in and half out of the water, looking like a schematic diagram of an amphibian, and he didn't jump.

He didn't jump; I crept closer. At last I knelt on the island's winter-killed grass, lost, dumbstruck, staring at the frog in the creek just four feet away. He was a very small frog, with wide, dull eyes. And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag. The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed. His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent. He was shrinking before my eyes like a deflating football. I watched the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, and rumple, and fall. Soon, part of his skin, formless as a pricked balloon, lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water: it was a monstrous and terrifying thing. I gaped, bewildered, appalled. An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog; then the shadow glided away. The frogskin bag started to sink.

I had read about the giant water bug, but never seen one. “Giant water bug” is really the name of the creature, which is an enormous, heavy-bodied brown true bug. It eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs. Its grasping forelegs are mighty and hooked inward. It seizes a victim with these legs, hugs it tight, and paralyzes it with enzymes injected during a vicious bite. That one bite is the only bite it ever takes. Through the puncture shoot the poisons that dissolve the victim's muscles and bones and organs—all but the skin—and through it the giant water bug sucks out the victim's body, reduced to a juice. This event is quite common in warm fresh water. The frog I saw was being sucked by a giant water bug. I had been kneeling on the island grass; when the unrecognizable flap of frogskin settled on the creek bottom, swaying, I stood up and brushed the knees of my pants. I couldn't catch my breath."

oh how sad ;-(

I would not consider that beastie a beneficial insect. Very sad....

How big was yours, Donna? I wonder if it bit you if the injected toxin would dissove the area under the bite. How gross is that.

Did you feast on it that night? Yum yum!

it was probaby 4 or 5" and mean. If I had known it would have went to heaven via the underside of my shoe lol. Was gone by the time I found out what he could do. Just the thought of it getting one of my little birds down drinking at the pond

Donna - Did you put your photo in BugFiles? It's really a good shot...

do you have a link CeeJay??

Here it is:

http://davesgarden.com/guides/bf/go/4955/