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What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever googled in researching a story?

Ooohhhh…. hah… uhm….

How do I pick *just* one?

I mean, there was the time I needed to determine if there are snakes or lizards that actually have live births of their young (There are.).

Or the afternoon I needed to research… uhm… adult toys for females for a scene regarding an in-home sales party (Yes, those parties do exist and lemme tell ya, the reviews for some of those items on amazon are HILARIOUS!).

How labor intensive is it to make apple cider? (Very, if you’re making it in quantity.).

How does it feel if you’re hanging upside down while bound in a straitjacket? (Answer from an unblocked magician’s forum: your ankles feel like they’re being broken if you don’t have a rig with special boots.)

What does scarring on the back look like after being seriously whipped as a form of punishment (“Unpleasant” is the politest term I can think of.)?

Is it “pneumatic” or “pneumonic” (It was pneumonic.)?

What would you use for a modern pagan spell for X purpose (Surprisingly, not everyone agrees on this one.)?

Is there a recipe to serve cat as a dish for human consumption (There is, it’s a medieval recipe in Spanish entitled “Cat as it is Meant to be Served” and I also discovered cat is still eaten in both 3rd world and 1st world countries (although the latter I discovered in… Switzerland, I think, in an article about the Swiss elderly and their incomes, so not a delicacy, so much as it is survival, in that case. And it isn’t illegal to eat a cat in Colorado,  but you can’t sell it, and if you ask a vet about the needs of agricultural raising of said animal for human consumption, you get a lot of dirty looks and no real answers.))?

Can humans eat large spiders (The legs – yes, the bodies – no. This is apparently a thing in Southeast Asia with a kind of tarantula the size of a dinner plate.)?

Can you order exotic meats for home delivery (Yes, provided your idea of exotic isn’t illegal. This place  sells kangaroo and ostrich among other things as well as rattlesnake and burmese python, (under the category “reptile” but they don’t show it on the list or in the silhouettes, you gotta go all the way to the bottom under “Packages and More”). They also don’t sell turtle, like a lot of places do.)?

And are we including non-internet “googling”? Because I’ve definitely asked some interesting questions of people I know because they have experiences I don’t, such as:

To my father, who had some experience with the US space program: Why don’t we use magnetic boots in space like the sf movies? (This one wasn’t really a research question, but more of a curiosity. Answer: Everything sent up to ISS or in satellites is de-magnetized to prevent damaging computer systems.)

My father again, because he’s a mathematics PhD: Is playing poker a statistical or probability analysis? (Answer: both, because you’re using statistics to determine probability.)

To my husband: What does it feel like to get racked while you’re also experiencing a hard on? (He was actually embarrassed to answer that question. I don’t know why – I mean, it was 20 years ago, it was an accident, and I apologized at the time. We’re married now and communication is supposed to be a thing.)

To a friend who’s spent time deployed in some interesting areas: What does cat taste like? (Like rabbit, which also confirmed my internet search.)

To a friend of my husband who said “ask me anything you need for your story”: How did losing your leg affect your sex life, both psychologically and physically? (Hey, my husband warned him, I warned him and he *still* opened that door; and gave me a number of insights that were very helpful for that character.)

Check out the Insecure Writer’s Support Group to see more writers dish about their concerns, their solutions to various problems, or just general helminthophobia.