Q. What did the earwig say as it fell down the stairs?
A. Earwig go!!
That was one of the few childhood jokes I remember. Strange how most of the jokes I recall seemed to involve some poor creature falling down stairs, but anyway …
I also remember seeing lots of earwigs as a child, and I don’t think I’ve seen any for years until walking (yes, you’ve guessed it) in the woods yesterday.
As for the story we all learned as children that earwigs crawl into your ear and lay eggs in your brain, that is an urban myth. Earwigs are harmless! And, in my opinion, a beautiful shade of brown. In fact, they remind me of the colour of a conker (horse chestnut / buckeye).
Also, I found, as you can see, earwigs are very shy and prefer to hide during daylight hours. I had to mess with Nature again for this one, and coax one of them away from their hiding place just long enough to get a picture. Apparently, you can tell the sex of an earwig by its pincers at the end of its tail. Males’ are rounder, and females’ are longer and … well, not so round. That said, in my humble opinion then – pictures 1,2 and 4 are females, and picture 2 is a male.
© Alice through the Macro Lens [2012]
Alice through the Macro Lens 
Fantastic macros 😀 and a nice info about the pincers and sex 🙂
wow you did a great job of capturing these ugly little beasties.I can, however, attest that they will crawl into your ear as that happened to my son at summer camp. He still freaks out anytime he sees one.
Ew, I hate earwigs! They have pinched me before – but not in the ear, thank goodness.
Nice shots of the little beasties, though!
They are buckeye colored (horse chestnut colored, conker colored), aren’t they? Such a deep, rich color. It’s amazing how much beauty you show us in things that usually seem too small or too ugly to bother with (and often both!).
Amazing photos.
Particularly like the first one!