Do you have them in your state? If not, lucky you. They don’t sting or bite, they just look like 4 to 5 inch roachs and are very friendly. When you turn on the light in the kitchen,
instead of running for their lives, they come to greet you,like a bunch of puppies.:eek:. Yes the exterminator has been here and is to come again this month…
There’s a reason they look like roaches… 
Here’s Orkin’s take on the difference between a cockroach and a palmetto bug:
I haven’t seen a cockroach since I moved to Washington. I didn’t see any in L.A. until a girlfriend came out from New Orleans and we saw a bunch munching popcorn outside the cinema. My first trip to New Orleans, I was fascinated and appalled. Three-inch flying cockroaches! :eek: I’d turn over cardboard boxes on the street to watch them scurry. So… many… roaches…
Palmetto. Google is your friend!
Whatever nice name people want to give them, they’re cockroaches. Big, juicy, winged American ones. At least they’re easier to catch than the damn fast and sneaky little German ones.
I’ve only ever seen two in my living space. I’m fairly certain they showed up on the 4th floor (unusual) because my neighbor at the time had decided to put a covered trash can out on the shared porch in the hot summer. I found the little buggers in my kitchen - well, my cat Nimbus the Bug Hunter found them, near the back door. When I asked my neighbor to remove the smorgasboard from the porch, she kindly obliged and I’ve never seen any before or since. (knock wood) Gross.
When the cats cross the Bridge I’m going to catch a couple of the Anole Lizards that hang out on the walls and mabe a Geco also… I understand they eat the things.
Palmetto bug is what a realtor calls a Cockroach. I have never had to deal with them in any of the places I’ve lived in here in FLA. For which I am grateful.
When I lived in Texas I had ferrets. I also had palmetto bugs. One time the two species met in my (dry) bathtub. I shut the bathroom door and let nature take its course.
Never saw another PB until my fuzzies died.
Once in a while, one would squeeze under our garage door in Louisiana. Our black cat liked playing with the free range toys until he got bored and ate them.
Do you mean centimeters?
I’ve only seen one, businessvacationing in Florida. It dropped from… somewhere… while I was in the middle of a shower. Even though I am as blind as a [del]bat[/del] cockroach, I saw it, and am not ashamed to admit, screamed like a girl as I flushed it down the drainpipe.
And some of you guys call them waterbugs. You think these are bad? These are waterbugs: Satan incarnate. Hope you don’t have trypophobia.
When the humidity was just appallingly, sickeningly high in Houston along with the heat there would be certain nights when you could just see the enormous roaches flying through the air outside, swarms of them under street lights.
My father says they were all over the place when he was a student at FSU. He and his roommates gave them names.
I’ll see em here in Charlotte when I’m coming home from work at night. I’ll see one scurry underneath me as I’m walking up the stairs. I haven’t seen any in Casa de Cups yet, and I sincerely hope I never do.
I’m making a move to Florida in 6 months or so…I’m a bit worried I’ll have em there though.
I had them in my slave quarter in New Orleans. At night I could hear them chewing paper in my books, they love the glue in the bindings. Here in South Texas, I think I’ve seen two of them in 8 years. In North Florida, I just had the little German ones – they came home with me from the Winn Dixie in shopping bags.
gag gag gag
I don’t see them here in North Florida, but saw them all the time when we lived in the south.
The absolute funniest thing I ever saw in my life, bar none, was the time a palmetto bug jumped off the curtains and fell right into my mother’s bodacious cleavage.
Like puppies… that cracked me up.
This reminds me of a story that I’ll try to tell. We get these huge Palmetto guys here in NC, and they really aren’t that scared (or maybe they aren’t that bright (well, they are cockroaches after all)) of things. I understand that they come inside looking for shelter from the elements more than looking for a meal. Though I’m not necessarily convinced, I still don’t let them bother me so much and often employ the catch and release method of removal. After all, I love all of God’s creatures, and they’re just trying to make a living like the rest of us, right? So one night last May, in the upstairs of my wife’s house there was a trophy-sized, 5.5" (might have been centimeters, donkeyoatey) specimen hanging-out in the corner near the window. It was spring, the windows were open (screened), it was late, and I just assumed he was on his way back outside or something… nothing to be concerned of.
As the wife jumped in the shower, I laid on the bed, taking in the Conan show. The show must have been lame that night, I was really tired, or perhaps both. I fell to sleep in just a few minutes, mouth open and breathing deeply and confidently as I slipped-off into dream land. And after a few minutes I kinda realized I was dreaming about that damn roach. As my dream developed, I also had a sensation of something tickling my lower lip. Just sort of a passing sensation at first, but as the sensation built, it caused me to wake up. And wake up I did with a freaking 6" American Cockroach sniffing around my respiratory effluent ! I quickly and thoughtfully (didn’t want to smash him and end-up with roach guts on my face) brushed him aside w/ a forceful exhale, a mild shudder and a WTF-just-happened response. I don’t know where he ended-up; I was just relieved to have him off my face. I admit, I felt a little violated and didn’t know how I was gonna pull myself together. But I reasoned that ultimately, it was just a bug, he’s gone now, I had survived and I now had a cool story to tell. I was sitting there, waiting on the wife to come to bed so I could tell her the horrifying tale, when a different thought crossed my mind. I realized that if I told her that story, she’d be up all night. Heck, she may never sleep in that room again. At the very least, she’d have me tearing the room apart as we embarked on a Palmetto-bug-hunting midnight safari.
I still have never shared that story with her, but my friends like to have fun with it. When they retell it, the roach has more of a sexual agenda than a culinary one.
There are several species here in North FL. The shorter of the two is usually a brighter red and more lethargic. They are fairly easy to smush, and not too bright when it comes to hiding.
The longer of the two is a deeper red and is fast as hell. They are so large you can hear them walking across various surfaces :eek:
My cats are woefully inconsistent in their bug interdiction.
The aforementioned move to Florida is in the middle/kinda north region (Mt. Dora for the current sunshiners)
So the fact that I haven’t heard a lot of responses to it are…encouraging.
I have some bad news for you… if you’re in Florida, you’ll be getting to know these guys very, very well. They are legion.