Ever seen a bug so big it could stand flat-footed and kiss a turkey? Kathy from Greensboro, North Carolina, called to share some classic idioms her Georgia grandmother would use to describe bugs, like those gallon-nipper mosquitos and Chatham County eagles, also known as palmetto bugs. There’s a long tradition in American tall tales of trying to one-up everyone else about the size of your hometown’s insects. This is part of a complete episode.
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My mother was a nurse who worked the night shift. When we were living in Florida, she used to say about the Palmetto bugs, “When we get tired at the end of the shift, we saddle them up and ride them down the hall to answer patient calls.”