I don’t think it was a palmetto/cockroach. We also call them water bugs. I’ve seen plenty of them.
The shape of this thing is so weird–squarish instead of tapered at head & tail.
“Entomologists estimate there may be as many as 10 million undiscovered insect species.”
Insect Diversity | Science Literacy and Outreach | Nebraska.
I did find an image from 2019 of an American cockroach with what I thought were cerci but turned out to be Secret Service agents.
Still waiting, @Kron, for your response. I’ve learned to listen when a guy in a pith helmet talks about wildlife.
I’m guessing some sort of ground beetle
That looks a lot more like it. Especially due to the overall rectangular shape as opposed to ovoid of standard cockroaches. Oh boy.
I did get confirmation on my camera footage that there ARE possums under the house. I’ve seen them in the yard (on footage) and I knew they lived in my neighbor’s garage, but now I have photographic evidence!
To me, the bug looks like this:
Can’t see its legs very well, so I’ve given them dashed lines.
Yes, I agree!
You can clearly see the cerci in this image here (one of the first two pulled up when I searched just the term “american cockroach”. Note that these aren’t forcep-like, like the way earwigs’ are, but for cockroaches at least, the cerci are packed with hairs and nerves for use as an extra sensory input. Most cockroach species have fairly prominent cerci; I didn’t recognize the critter in the video, but I did start looking for unknown (to me) species of cockroach that might fit just because of the visible cerci. I struck out, though, didn’t find any with that same body shape. Actually, I couldn’t really find ANY insect with quite the body plan as it appears in the video.
More cockroach cerci (different species):
And a cricket, of course, also has extraordinarily prominent cerci, but the insect was surely not a cricket:
Long story short (too late), I really have no idea what it was. My gut was “unknown roach species”, but I definitely couldn’t find anything that matched that body plan. I’m really wondering if the color/lighting combination is really messing with the perception of its shape.
This is the answer!..
OMG, it looks just like plankton! 
The little head reminds me of the shrunken head guy in the Beetlejuice movie.
Thank you for taking the time to post that. Yeah, now I’m seeing the same images you’ve posted when I search for the term with or without quotation marks. I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention the other day, because the cerci are clearly visible in nearly every image of different kinds of cockroaches. Ignorance fought!
Well, it’s back! But is this even the same creature? This looks more like a rounded animal, except for the antennae. It also seems to have a tail. It’s hard to get a true idea of its size because the camera is so close to the action.
After viewing this video, which is worse than the first one, I’ve changed the night vision settings on the camera, so if the creature comes back again I may get a clearer picture.
Yep, I figured it would be south. I love being a north lander because our winters either kill most things that creep and crawl and sting and bite, or they prevent them from living here.
Oh happy day.
Yeah, my thought was cockroach as well. It’s Texas. We all have cockroaches. We just don’t always see them. Or their spawn
The cockroaches have cockroaches in Texas.
Not! That means MORE cockroaches!
I think this article about houseflies can also be applied to cockroaches - there are always just about as many roaches in the environment as it can support: