Ode to a Cockroach, or AAAAAAAAHHHHHHgetitoffgetitoffgetitoff

Dave, this beautiful apocalypse-surviving bug will get no respect from me until it learns to respect my personal space by not falling within inches of my nose and onto my defensless leg.

And Eve, that takes the cake. That is simply the grossest thing I’ve heard in a really long time.

ah yes the B-52 cockroaches as they are called here are quie annoying, only bug I am scared of. Which does not excues the following story.

My sister was and is freakishly scared of cockroaches. Any size. And whenever I was in the need of a good chuckle I would jump out of my seat do a huge ‘J’accuse’ type of point at my sister’s feet and yell “COCKROACH!” which would then cause her to scream, leap out of her chair, run across the room, up the stairs, into her bedroom and onto her bed. She was 13. chuckle chuckle chuckle oh it was mean I know but damned if it didn’t work every time.

My punishment? Every 3 or 4 months or so one of them will fly in the window. I live in a crowded apartment with LOTS of places to hide. Anyway when that happens I will often end up staying all night trying to hunt down and kill the blasted thing because I can NOT sleep knowing it’s out there, waiting to make an end run into my mouth shudder And when I grab that little bugger in a nice think piece of paper towel I run to the bathroom and floush that sucker like you have never seen any other 6’5" 240 pound guy.

Like that makes 'em somehow cuter right?:eek:

Saw one yesterday in my apartment, and it turned me into one of the foulest-mouthed murderers you never wanna meet. I used a folded magazine on the little sonofabitch, but if I had had a baseball bat, my next door neighbor and I would now be roommates. The words that came frothing outta my mouth woulda made a sailor blush, folks! I was Rambo, man!

So anyway, now the little cock(sucker-sorry!) is part of my wall, which was coated with cheap paint, so that when I tried to wash it off it left a dull place on the wall which I covered with Kilz (stain and mildew paint) and then recovered with touch-up paint. A friggin’ martyr for his kind!

I felt like I was in a cartoon!:rolleyes:

Quasi

When living in S.C. several years ago, Mrs. Ivorybill and I were reading in bed when a palmetto bug came flying in from the hall. Time stood still while this “nuclear cockroach” described a graceful arc over the bed, hit the wall on Mrs. Ivorybill’s side of the bed, fell to the floor, and crawled under the bed. I believe the exact words uttered by Mrs. Ivorybill were “AAACCCKKK!!! KILL IT!!! KILL IT NOW!!!” while she whipped off the covers, popped up on her hands and knees, and peered over the edge of the bed. As I’m rolling up the National Geographic and preparing to ride into action, I notice that Mrs. Ivorybill’s bare feet are mere inches from my fingertips. I couldn’t resist. With only the tips of my fingernails, I made my best palmetto-bug-crawling-up-the-sole-of-a-foot imitation. Mrs. Ivorybill screamed again: “I knew it was you!” as she catpulted herself into the wall next to the bed.

After helping her off the floor, I killed the roach.

I said I was sorry. I slept on the couch anyway.

It was worth it.

i have two roach stories

  1. I was at a party in someone’s garage wshen this huge roach flies in, I think it would be what you guys call a Palmettoe Bug, everyone in the room is freakin out. Then this big bug lands on the table with all the food and starts crawling around, so i pick up a clear tupperware container and drop it on the guy. The SOB wont die, he’s still undre the tupperware on his back and squirming his legs, so I hit the tupperware container and his yellow inards splatter out all over the bottom of the container. then someone comes over and lifts the tupperware, IT"S STILL ALIVE…

  2. Last night i was up hear readin SDMB when this roach goes crawling by me on the ceiling, I look around for something to kill it with, seeing nothing i swallow my sense of decency and smash the poor thing wiht my fist. Getting inards all over me.

and about respecting roaches, ill only do it at a funeral.

ROFL!!! Funny. Hee, hee, hee.

When I was in Tampa, those bastards scared the poop outta me. I’d be sitting in my not-quite-a-living-room, there in my not-a-double-wide trailer, and fwoom! I’d see one jumping around, then scurrying as only they can to the kitchen area. And THEN they got behind the cannisters of flour and sugar and such. And you can’t just let them be; they could floop around at any moment and land on your face and get in your mouth while you sleep or bask in the greatness that is your Froot Loops - you just don’t know. So I’d arm myself with a Nike sneaker. Actually, two. Because I figured if I threw the sneaker at the bastard and missed, he’d come after me with something bigger.

My roach stories:
I’m at my sister’s house in Waco, Tx. We’re all sitting around watching TV. A big moth flies in through a crack in the screen door. I thought nothing of it. A while later, I put my hands behind my head, and come face to face with a giant palmetto bug who had crawled under my armpit. In one motion, I stripped off my shirt and bra, screaming at the top of my lungs, and threw the shirt as far as I could. Everybody was staring at me as if I’d lost my mind! Considering they didn’t see the roach, I don’t blame them. Thank God there was only my sister, her girl friend, and my husband in the room at the time. In retrospect, I don’t think it would have mattered if the Pope had been in the room. That shirt was coming off! (I don;t know why I didn’t just brush it off. It never occured to me.)

Another time, when I lived in Houston, I picked a pair of jeans off the floor and put them on. I felt a strange cold, hard, wiggling sensation high on my inner thigh. Oh my God! The horror! At least this time no one was in the room as I stripped them off as quickly as possible…

What’s the word for roach-a-phobic? That’s me!

:: shudder::

I hate those big flying sumbitches! (Anybody read or seen the movie Whispers? Absolutely terrifying.)

Did anyone else look up at their own ceiling after reading the OP?

EEEWWWWW!

I’m so sorry 'bout that Pucette. I’m not really too scared of bugs while I’m awake - but one of my biggest fears is a creature crawling on my while I’m asleep. I can’t even stand the thought! My body is shivering while I type this.

EEEEWWWWW!

I work at a place where they process tritium to go into nuclear bombs… and a few months ago there was a roach in one the office buildings and someone stepped on it - it turned out to have radioactive waste on it. Now thats really really scary.

Roaches, eww :: shudders ::

The only thing I can imagine that is worse than a cockroach is a flying one. :eek: Thankfully, I’ve not come across any yet.

The ickiest roach story from personal experience occured in downtown LA. My friends and I had attended a play and after we were walking back to our cars. We crossing this one area to get to the garage and something caught my eye. I look down and practically the whole area is covered in roaches. Huge mutant roaches. We had to be careful where we walked (I hate the crunching sound they make when you step on them) and they showed no fear. I can’t say the same for the rest of us.

We don’t have roaches in rural Minnesota, so the following is a result of my own ignorance:

While stationed in Miami I moved in to a house that had been vacant for quite some time. The new house had a little closet-thing out back that was empty except for some shelving, the hot water heater, and and a bunch of what looked like sunflower seed shells on the floor.

“Oh!” I thought to myself. “What a perfect place to store the dog food!”

I came home off an eve watch my first night there and reached for the big ol’ McDonald’s cup I used to feed the mutt.

Oh.

MY.

GOD!!!

:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of roaches. A million of 'em, maybe!

You know that the uniform of the United States Navy includes bellbottoms, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Any guesses as to where half of those … creatures took cover?

shudder

I honestly believe that the only reason I didn’t go completely out of my freakin’ mind is because the Navy working jacket has elastic sleeves so the little bastards couldn’t climb UP MY ARM!!!

I also bug bombed the SH*T outta that house, but not before I found a new place to store the dog food.

I’ve never seen a roach in my entire life.

Thank you, incredibly cold winters on the tundra. Thank you very much.

When I was 11 I saw something so horrendous it would make Wes Craven run to the bathroom holding his stomach. I hate to tell you this Purcett, but in New York them giant waterbugs like to swarm.

I was at my aunts house one July. We were in the livingroom watching T.V. when we hear these strange crackingg noises from the back. My aunt goes back to take a look, screams in horror, runs back out to snatch her 3 year old daughter and run to the door. She slowed down just enough to yell “Come on!” to me.

We pass by her bedroom on the way out the door. She had left her window open and flying in --4 stories above the ground-- was a swarm of gigantic waterbugs. They made a nasty clicking noise when they flew and a “snap” when the landed. They covered the wall opposite the window. It looked like there were thousands of those wiggling monstrosities huddling around each other on that wall.

My aunt went home with me and refused to go back to her apartment for 3 days and wouldn’t sleep there for a month.

Y’know, I’ve been lucky - no sightings in the four years I’ve been in this apartment. But of course, as I mentioned in another thread, I have mice.

Mice eat cockroaches.

Aww man I feel all left out. Here in Redding CA, the biggest cockroach I have seen outside of a zoo was just under an inch long (2 cm?) no big deal at all.

But when I was helping my best friends girlfriend moove last week, I saw a GIANT Madagascar Hissing Cockroach!! like 4-5 inches long! I want one as a pet.

I don’t see a lot of cockroaches here, except when I go into guys’ dorms. EEW.

I live by the Mississippi and in the summer there comes a mass swarm of a lovely little bug called a “Fish fly.” For the unenlightened a fish fly is the most disgusting, gross, nasty bug ever. Imagine a giant mosquito looking thing that smells like rotting fish that swarms wherever there is light. Downtown it gets unsafe to drive because they are on the street making it slippery. :shudder:

In my parent’s house there are PLENTY of earwigs, centepides, and millipedes. AAGH! Soooooo creepy.

The other morning I woke up and looked at the wall and right by my head was a 2 inch long red millipede. EEK!:eek: I usually don’t kill them, just run out of the room screaming, but it was sooo close to me. I whacked that sucka with my winter boot. Twice. He didn’t die the first time.

Southeast Missouri is as far south as I’ve ever lived. It’s as far south as I ever want to live. In Missouri, I saw cicada skins (I would have gone stark raving screaming mad if I’d ever seen a live cicada) and junebugs and roaches and one GIGANTIC millipede (and numerous small ones). The thought of some of those bugs makes my skin crawl like a paranoid paraplegic on crack to this day.

Thankfully, Montana is a land of cold winters and brief, dry summers. Large insects cannot live here. They would die, and strew the earth with their dessicated, frozen corpses. Montana would be bleak if a nuclear war broke out for the simple reason that cockroaches do not live here. Maybe Montana’s winters are worse than any nuclear winter, I don’t know. But roaches cannot survive in Montana.

That makes me insanely happy. That makes me exult in the roach-free air and leave my windows open all day and (some of them) all night. That makes me store pet food in containers roaches would get into. But yes, we have no roaches, we have no roaches today. Or tommorow. Or ever. Bwahaha! :smiley:

Resume with your horror stories, O Inhabitants of the Southlands, and know ye that I, Derleth, Beloved of the Cold, Inhabitant of Montana, do not fear the caprices of hexapedial arthropods.

:smiley:

The occasional roach wanders in from outside (I live in Georgia) but I also have the most wonderful cat. It’s disgusting and disturbing to watch, but he takes care of them for me. Chases them, tortures them for a while, then eats them. Ewwwwww…but it’s better than if I had to squish them.

I’m so glad we have good pest control.

One morning, back when I was living in the student ghetto a few years ago, I was brushing my teeth. I felt something on my hand, rolled my right eye down about 35% degrees and saw antenna. Damn thing was sitting on my hand AS I WAS BRUSHING MY TEETH. I gave this little girl shriek of terror, danced a jig and then huddled up in the corner and shivered for a few hours. Not a good experience.

So I’ve got to ask Pucette, were you (or any of the rest of you) taken in by that Orkin TV commercial? Y’know, the one that starts out like an ad for something else, then you see a silhouette of a roach crawling across your TV screen?

I’d heard (possible UL) that more than a few people bashed in their TV screens trying to kill that thing.

Fortunately I’ve got no living-nightmare roach stories, but I DO have a story for Little Bird. Growing up in the mountains of western NC, the climate was cool enough that we weren’t overly bothered with bugs. Except for one year… Our yard is very wooded and one insect that loves trees is the earwig. For weeks these lil’ bastards had been getting bolder about coming inside until one night I got fed up and tore outside with our big garden sprayer fully loaded with diazenon. I started spraying around the windows, but when I rounded the corner and shone flashlight up I realized, with a shriek, that I was rather underequipped.

The entire end of the house was crawling, swarming with earwigs. Thousands. My memory after seeing that is somewhat hazy, but I believe I retreated into the house, where we shut the windows tight and huddled in our beds until morning. When we called the exterminator.

Well, I only live 6 hours away from Panama City Beach, so there!
Uh, what’s the employment situation for respiratory therapists in Montana, Der? :wink:

Quasi