Thanks for the link. It is good to know that I was not alone in calling it a potato bug (12.9%)
The top 5 in the rankings:
roly poly (33.07%)
pill bug (15.91%)
I have no idea what this creature is (13.21%)
potato bug (12.95%)
I know what this creature is, but have no word for it (9.44%)
We’re in this for the species, boys and girls. It’s simple numbers. They have more. And every day I have to make decisions that make hundreds of you scoot back from the computer monitor making the oogie-boogie “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE” noise.
I grew up in Texas. Antlions (they make a little cone in very soft dirt or sand) were always called doodlebugs and what some people call “roly polies” were always pillbugs.
Yep, we called 'em doodle bugs growing up in South Texas.
What are those bugs that dig holes in sand, creating kind of a crater that other bugs fall into? There were lots of those when I was little, too, but we have clay where we live now instead of sand, so I haven’t seen one in a long while.
My family calls them army bugs. But then, we’re insane, so can’t really be used as a representative sample for anything.
I was torn between wanting to eat one and worrying if it would try to clamp onto my face.
Hey, you can see the… no, wait, that’s a leg.
Or, could that one…
Nope. Leg.
Hmmm.
I was just gonna’ say doodle bug and I grew up in San Antonio!
Those are antlions, which is the insect that is most commonly called “doodlebug.”
Being that isopods are crustaceans, pillbug scampi might be worth a try if you had enough of them.
Woodlouse Recipes
(and before you ask, no, I have not yet tried eating woodlice - I’m saving that experience for when I get stranded, far away from all other sources of food)
I had a friend who told us about shooting woodchucks in his basement with a BB gun. He and his brothers would move items to find the woodchucks and then blast them with the BB gun. We were incredulous. You have woodchucks living in your basement? A lot of them? Don’t they get mad? He then described the ‘woodchucks’. The little bugs that roll into a ball when you touch them.
Ohhhh, potato bugs. (although I think at least one person called it a pill bug…I don’t recall as this was 20 years ago).
And is it just me, or does that look a LOT like the bug that Kahn put in Chechov’s ear?
[the google ad suggests ‘Chocolate covered cricket’. Yum.]
While on the subject of insects…
I sometimes have either some ‘firebrats’ OR some ‘silverfishes’ in my bedroom.
One likes hot temperatures, the other one hates it.
But they could be twins.
How do I find out which is which?
My bedroom is sometimes warm, sometimes damp…
And who named insects?
Why would you call a perfectly innocent creature a ‘pissebed’, or another one a ‘earcrawler’ [earwig]?
Why has a ‘ladybug’ such a nice name? [It’s even nicer in Dutch, it’s called
‘Our Dear Lord’s little animal’. [Onzelieveheer’s beestje]
True story from my childhood…
When I was very small (fourish?) I asked my mother this very same question. She didn’t know. But her father Knew All, so we put some “pill bugs” in a manilla envelope and mailed them to my grandfather, with a note, “what do you call these bugs?”
His reply? “Looks like a bunch of dead bugs.”
“Earwig” in English comes from “arse-wiggle”, more or less, describing the way it walks. Or not.
“Ladybug” in English is “ladybird”, except in Norwich where it’s a “bishy barnaby”. Why Bishop Barnabas (or Barnaby, even) I have no idea. 
Thanks, I thought I had seen a recipe somewhere. I googled on “pillbug recipes” and didn’t get anything.
Wouldn’t the exoskeletons of the pillbugs give the food an awful texture? Those recipes interest me, but I don’t like the idea of eating exoskeletons. I’ve gotten small pieces of crawfish exoskeletons in my mouth and it bugs the hell out of me.
By the way, pillbugs are usually called roly polies here in northeast Texas and ant lions are called doodle bugs.