Jerusalem Cricket

I had been watering the herb garden like crazy last weekend (which has been on the dry side due to our very disappointing, basically ersatz Godzilla El Nino this past winter here in SoCal) and I think I may have disturbed this guy out of his semi-subterranean abode with the unexpected H2O deluge. 

Anyhoo, Gil saw it ascending the stuccoed wall and was seriously perturbed, gesticulating and shouting at both me and the ostensibly alien bug-like critter-thing. I reassured him that it was just a harmless Jerusalem Cricket - nothing to get his panties in a twist about. That is, until I read this description of it in Insects of the Los Angeles Basin (disregarding the fact we're not in LA): "The large size of the Jerusalem Cricket...and their amber-colored humanoid heads caused them to be the object of superstition and fear by some Southwestern and Mexican Indians. The Navajo thought them deadly poisonous and called them "wo see ts inii" which means "skull insect" or "bone neck beetle."
Although their strong jaws can bite with considerable force, Jerusalem Crickets are not poisonous."

Cold comfort if they actually bite you.

4/30/16 Jerusalem Cricket (Stenopelmatus species) crawling up the wall in the herb garden