Bug

Anyone know what this is? I have found several of them crawling around inside my house.

It is soft, i.e., does not have a hard shell.

tanstaafl.

edit: The scale is centimeters/millimeters

I'm not a bug expert, but that looks a whole lot like a full tick.
GIS link for "Engorged Tick":
GIS Tick Pictures

Wow, a raisin with legs!

Yup, I instantly recognized that as a tick that's full of blood it's just gotten done drinking from some large warm mammal.

Do you have pets?

Yes. One cat, one dog. (see attached photo of Akela playing in the surf)

I was afraid that was what the bug was, but was hoping for something more benign.

You are correct, it is an engorged tick, and an examination of Akela's dog house shows more of them inside. I have sprayed his fuzzy doggie bed and the inside of the doghouse with insecticide (I'll have to wash them both thoroughly with soap and water before he's allowed to use them again) and dosed both animals with Advantage tick and flea medicine. I'll have to keep a close eye out to be sure that I've gotten them all, and I'll call the fumigator tomorrow to come and go through the place as well.

Thanks, all, for the heads-up.

tanstaafl.

Edit -- OK, what's with the link on the word "correct"? I didn't put it there, looks like someone has hacked the bbs!

Edit2 -- Now that spurious link has disappeared. It was to some site about winning a free iPad... It is the second time I have seen that pop up here today.

Edit3 -- Now that link is back on the word "free". Probably it will go away as soon as I finish editing this post. But it looks like there is some hackery going on here, possibly based on key words.

Edit4 -- More likely, it is my computer that is hacked, and not the bbs... but this anomaly only shows up when I am here.

db

Definitely a tick. Have the same ones here (on my dog).

You're correct. The spam links are likely from your computer.

Funny how that never happens on my Mac.

Funny how that never happens on any of my Windows boxes...

I have only seen those stuck to a dog it seemed like they just stayed on there until they died.

Which probably means you're running Antivirus or Anti-Malware software of some kind. I am not.

I don't want to derail this too far, but I am not either. Are you channeling your inner Bruno?

I must be. Got hit by a wave of snobbery tonight I suppose. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Akela has a funny way of playing in the surf. It is almost like he is going to the veterinarian.

Don't bother reading this, it is just a test to see if I have solved the malware problem with the unwanted links.

I cleared my cache and deleted all my cookies, and so far it seems to have fixed things, but I won't know for sure until things have run "cleanly" for a couple more days. I'll put in some of the key words that triggered the behavior before: iPad, free, correct, yes, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious [just kidding...] and see what happens.

tanstaafl.