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Kill it! KILL IT!

piny

I have been fortunate enough never to have cohabited with large numbers of roaches. When I was growing up, ants would flood in with the rain. When I was in college, every house I lived in had mice, which had no fear of us whatsoever. I thought they were kind of cute, although it would have been nice if they could have pretended to be a little timid. I was terrified of living with roaches, and really scared of what would happen when I went to stay with a friend in New York who has a slight roach problem:

Me: Hey, there are baby roaches and mommy and daddy roaches!

Him: I think those are two different species.

Me: I know. It helps, though.

But they didn’t bother me anywhere near as much as I thought. They were bugs. Insects. Like…ladybugs and grasshoppers and the aforementioned ants. They didn’t look like the roaches in the insecticide ads, the ones with bulging muscles who got coconut-oil rubdowns before each photo shoot.

(While in New York, I met an entomology student who had accidentally (not accidentally-on-purpose, mind) infested his (soon-to-be-former, although possibly not for this reason) girlfriend’s appartment with Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Which are hefty and hiss when “disturbed.”)

The week I came home, I found a silverfish in a baking pan under the sink. I had to flush it down the drain and run the garbage disposal for like two minutes before I could stop hyperventilating.

I’m not sure what the problem is, although I feel for belledame here:

A spider which was thought to be the biggest in captivity in the UK has died at the age of 20.

Lucretia, a goliath birdeater tarantula, had been the star attraction at Stratford Butterfly Farm in Warwickshire until her recent demise.

She was 10in in diameter, about the size of a dinner plate…

Strangely enough, the response to this has not in fact been hoarse cries of relief and pitchforks and torches finally dropped from exhausted, trembling hands; but rather, mourning, andbut, luckily we still have this other GIANT SPIDER THAT EATS MAMMALS AND FROGS that will eventually reach this size, to wit, the size of a DINNER PLATE.

Eeeeurgh.

69 thoughts on Kill it! KILL IT!

  1. While in New York, I met an entomology student who had accidentally…infested his…girlfriend’s appartment with Madagascar hissing cockroaches.

    I would immediately burn the apartment down, probably with him in it.

  2. When I lived in south Georgia, almost everybody had roaches. It was just a fact of life, ugh. I hate them. I used to want to be an entomologist when I was a kid, I collected bugs and everything, but I have ALWAYS hated roaches. Shudder.

    The other night I was preheating the oven to bake some cookies with a friend, and I kept smelling a burning smell. I figured a bit of cheese or something had fallen in the oven last time I baked and was now burning, so I opened it to check.

    Roasted roach. A big one. Like the ones that come from outside. Ugh, I wanted to puke.

  4. What Auguste said. how does one ACCIDENTALLY infest someone ELSE’S apartment with…those things? hm? only if they were somewhere ON HIS PERSON when he came over, is how. or at least…eggs.

    burn it, and salt the earth.

  5. What Auguste said. how does one ACCIDENTALLY infest someone ELSE’S apartment with…those things? hm? only if they were somewhere ON HIS PERSON when he came over, is how. or at least…eggs.

    burn it, and salt the earth.

    I think he probably had a tank full or something; he might have been staying there and keeping some stuff there. My mom’s never had bugs, thank God, but there’ve been similar situations with brains and eyes and skeletons.

  7. The big roaches that come from the outside (we refer to them waterbugs usually) are scary when they flight right at you. I”m less freaked out by them b/c I know the cause is wet weather / rotting wood.

    My cat in her younger days was an excellent hunter but she wanted to present them to me as a trophy which is fine except when I’m asleep in bed. Her growl was a big clue for me to say “Ming you drop that thing right now and DO NOT get into the bed with it.” Next morning big dead bug on floor but at least I was prepared.

    Its those smallish roaches that I hate b/c I consider them “dirty apt/this home needs to be cleaned/its an infestation” bug. Sometimes in apts they can cross over from a neighbors dirty place. Blech. Roaches carry disease and I saw some horrible show where a southern rural family was very poor and 1 child had ear damage from roach climbing inside ear canal when it tried to get back out. So very sad.

  8. Story: Ex-girlfriend and I were sitting on the couch watching the tube when I see a spider, itty bitty thing too, dropping down on a web and looked to land on ex-girlfriend right ear or shoulder. Now, she was afraid of spiders to the point of panic, so I covered her eyes and snuffed the little critter.

    She looked at me funny and I told what had happened she still leapt up and freaked a little. Man, hate to think what would have happened had she seen the spider with me sitting right next to her. My life might have been danger – collateral damage in the attempt to escape from the bug.

    Now a 10 inch spider! Come home from work and find a 10 inch spider waiting for you at the door like a dog, or sitting on the couch, that would freak anyone out. (shiver)

  9. I have been fortunate enough never to have cohabited with large numbers of roaches.

    Me too. I once had a girlfriend who had them in her apartment. Saw them once, never went back (she eventually moved in with me).

    Around here it’s spiders (not dinnerplate sized!). I used to have a bit of a problem with them (and bugs in general), but that all changed when I became the “Kill it! KILL IT!” guy in the house.

    My cat in her younger days was an excellent hunter but she wanted to present them to me as a trophy which is fine except when I’m asleep in bed.

    My cat is an excellent exterminator of insects. I just have to say “spider” and she’s on the case.

  10. I used to live in Hawaii (and I’m an asshole too) and we’d get cockroaches that were four or five inches long on the Big Island. I mean, big enough that you saw one and you expected it to strike up a conversation with you. Think those weird Mexican guys in “Men in Black.”

    Having lived both with NYC and Baltimore Bawlmer cockroaches, the Hawaiian kine weren’t so bad. If anyone’s tried to kill a NYC cockroach they know it’s nigh impossible. You could drop a ton of bricks on one and it’ll walk away. The Hawaiian ones, though, had super soft shells. Which I learned the hard way the first time I saw and tried to kill one. Four inches of cockroach produces a lot of cockroach guts. Really nasty cockroach guts. Everywhere.

  11. I’m an entomologist, and I think that I’ve infested my own apartment with the little brown-banded roaches that inhabit my lab. There are also Oriental roaches that come up from the drains. I’d much rather have hissing cockroaches because they are cute and friendly, unlike vile Orientals or Germans. Infesting a place with cockroaches is very easy; all it takes is one pregnant female.

    Roaches are not known to vector any disease, although they do walk through all manner of icky things. And they do like to crawl into warm, tasty ears.

    I love arthropods that eat vertebrates. PZ Myers had a video of a giant bat-eating centipede up on his blog, which was excellent.

  12. I’d much rather have hissing cockroaches because they are cute and friendly, unlike vile Orientals or Germans.

    Racist.

  13. you know, i’m generally ok with most insects. sure, they may get a lip curl of disgust from me, but i can deal. hell, i even like spiders because they have nifty insect-killing skills, which let’s me be lazy about the situation.

    but silverfish? no way. all bets are off. i call them by the name i first knew them by, when a three inch one landed on the face of a friend who was sleeping and who subsequently woke up screaming – satan bugs. they are truly bugs of the devil.

  14. My cat is an excellent exterminator of insects. I just have to say “spider” and she’s on the case.

    Mine used to be, but it was a problem when she couldn’t distinguish between vermin and vermin we kept as pets, you know?

  17. My cat is an excellent exterminator of insects. I just have to say “spider” and she’s on the case.

    My cat just pisses me off that way. She just wants to play with them. I’m like “Kill it already!”, but nooo. However, as insects don’t particularly bother me, I wind up killing it myself.

    Now mice., they terrify me. And will she kill mice either? Again, no, just play with them. I swear, that’s just cruel of her. Well, it was only the one time. Fortunately, mice stay away from my apartment, I think because they sense the predator.

  18. She just wants to play with them. I’m like “Kill it already!”

    I have no such problem. My cat is a bloodthirsty serial killer who eats her victims (except for one type of yellowish spider – must taste bad).

  19. I deal pretty well with almost all bugs with which I have any reasonable level of experience. The exception: cockroaches. And, as I just recently figured out, cicadas. They’re big and they’re fast, and airborne to boot. The other night I had two flying cockroaches that I swear were holding races to see which one could scurry up (the outside of) my living room windows the fastest. They kept doing it over and over, and finally I had to leave the room. Makes me shudder just thinking about it.

    I’m hoping that my cat, whom I’ve had for a month or so now, will prove to be a first-rate in-house exterminator.

  20. Silverfish have never freaked me out (I kept one as a pet very briefly, but these days I kill them without a 2nd thought, cause they will eat books! evil indeed) – though, granted, I’ve only seen specimens under an inch long – but house centipedes, man, those give me the willies every time! They move as fast as lightning, which is part of the problem, they get quite large, which is another part of the problem, and they have WAY too many long, long legs. I don’t kill them, though, because they are predators, and I don’t mind sharing my home with creepy things that are eating smaller creeping things. I just wish they didn’t /move/ the way they do. Brrr.

    Big roaches I have thankfully rarely had to deal with. Creepy. Move way too fast.

  22. When I was in college, every house I lived in had mice, which had no fear of us whatsoever.

    You didn’t by any chance go to Ohio State, did you? I ask because Columbus native James Thurber once wrote about mice in his childhood home that were so friendly that they would come running up to people. When his mother had company over, she would put out little bowls of food for the mice so they wouldn’t bother the guests. I thought maybe Columbus was just infested with extra-tame mice.

  23. Caja, I’m with you on the centipede thing. I hate roaches (and I’ve lived with a few in my life) but not nearly with the visceral shivering disgust that I feel for centipedes. I don’t know where they’re going to get to with all those legs–what if they run up my leg and into my mouth before I get a chance to react?

    I actually rather like spiders. I have enormous respect for them, at least. And I’m very fond of jumping spiders–first of all because they’re just so damned cute, but also because I once saw one take a flying leap at a cockroach and kill it so handily; jumping spiders are my buddies now. I mean it.

    Now, what I really can’t stand are slugs. I had a little apartment once in Texas. Every morning I’d wake up and find silver slug trails all over the carpet, but I’d never see the slugs. I figured they were coming in the house when it was dark. So one night I got on the couch, turned out the lights for about 20 minutes, then switched the light on. There, on my living room carpet, were three enormous (I mean 4 or 5 inch long) grey slugs, just sliming their way across the floor. Oh, ick. The thought of those things creeping about when I was sleeping just about killed me.

    I solved the slug problem, though, by keeping a sprinkling of salt around all the areas they could come in (windows, door sills) and that took care of that.

    Ewwwww. Slug slime.

  24. Sometimes I have roach nightmares. I think it’s from my years in Arizona where the palm roaches on campus would fly under my scooter (mostly after dark) and make the most appalling crunchy noises. If there was no crunch, I always envisioned them hanging out somewhere on me.

    But I have to say that the worst infestation I’ve ever had was scorpions. Once word gets around to the friends, no one will come to your home.

  25. I just moved to Arizona, and I don’t know what kind of rock the roaches here have been mating with, but I couldn’t go barefoot in the bedroom for weeks after I found my husband pounding away at a cockroach with his shoe as it blithely bounced off the carpet and refused to die.

  27. Don’t forget the poisonous snakes and spiders found in AZ. My brother once caught a black widow that had a body (I repeat- body, not legspan) the diameter of a quarter. Why he caught it, instead of killing it is beyond me.

  28. My cat is an excellent exterminator of insects. I just have to say “spider” and she’s on the case.

    And therein lies the reason that people are suspicious of single women who own cats. Vibrators, sperm banks, and cats who kill spiders—having a man is increasingly optional.

  31. On the other hand, you can’t really generate “Awwwwww….” responses from Friday Man Blogging. Well, you can, but is that the audience you really want?

    Unless you can get pix of them lying on their backs showing off their furry tummies. Awwww….

  32. I once lived in a horrid slum apartment for about three months, waiting for something better. It had roaches, I mean there was an entire Roach Country in the bathroom. Go into the windowless bathroom, turn on the light and immediately, one would see a virtual sea of small brown/black critters. I never saw them still though since as soon as the light came on they adjourned their town meeting and within seconds were in hiding.

    I don’t mind house spiders, knowing that the common house spider will feed on the brown recluse, which I don’t want to meet anytime soon. Garden spiders absolutely give me the creeps and walking in the woods and accidentally walking into a web strung across saplings and can make cause me to wave my arms about myself for about five minutes (frantically hoping to fling off the unseen spider I might have caught).

    And centipedes, considering their predatory skills are tolerable. And we never kill the bzillions of creatures we see on the lumber or tools when working on a jobsite. Except carpenter ants, I’ll be damned if I allow them to take a free ride onto a peice of lumber into anything I build, which they’ve tried.

  34. My cats are quite fond of killing mice… We have a big yard with lots of room for them to hunt and I usually walk out the door to a dead mouse or parts of one at least twice a week. One of them also got a monarch butterfly recently, my daughter was so disturbed she kept saying “dead butterfly” and yelling at the cats.
    Amanda, they do come in handy for cleaning up mouse and or chipmunk pieces… and I seldom have to tell him to stop licking my face.

  35. Oh, kactus! Indoor slugs?! Yuck! And I join you in love for jumping spiders – I used to find them on the south wall of my parents’ house, hanging out in the sun. I used to chase them, of course, to see them jump, though they’d only move just far enough to not be touched. There were some quite lovely big ones, with red abdomens; those were my favorites. I have lots of house spiders at present, but they’re all web-spinners of one sort or another.

    I lived in Texas for a brief time, and had all of one encounter with an enormous roach, but fortunately no scorpions. A friend who lived in the same apartment complex had a scorpion fall out of one of his light fixtures, though – and he lived in a 2nd floor apartment. I’d take the roach over that. (I also had a brief moment of terror caused by a tiny little lizard that got in and skittered along the _wall_. I had absolutely no idea what that Thing might be, and it scared me half to death before I realized what it was.)

  36. Yeah, I dunno. My cat…well.

    A couple of summers ago I had mice. Like, all at once–well, first one mouse. Then there were many. they skittered unnervingly close to my chair as I was eating. they streaked through my peripheral vision as i was taking a bath. i was:NOT HAPPY.

    i found the first one because the cat was chasing it (right as i was drifting off to sleep, natch), but from then on…he’d maybe park himself in front of a wall and stare at it intently for a while, then get bored and do something more pressing.

    Finally, one day after my third heart attack or so, I stormed into the bedroom, picked him up from the closet floor where he’d been napping (not disturbed in the least by my piercing shrieks, natch, although i think the neighbors and some dogs over in the next county may have been annoyed), and plonked him in the living room where i’d last seen the littler varmint skittering. I told him,

    “You! Cat! There! Mouse! GO GET MOUSIE!!!”

    He went all splay-footed, looked bewildered for a moment, and then fell to scratching the couch.

    i don’t know what i pay him for, really

  37. She just wants to play with them. I’m like “Kill it already!”,

    LOL. The first fall after we got our two cats, when the field mice started trying to come in for the winter, the cats would hunt them. But I never actually saw either of them kill one, because they would chase it, catch it, watch it struggle, and then take it entirely in their mouth like they were going to swallow it whole, then they’d spit the thing out and start the whole process over. Eventually when the mouse was too tired/scared/freaked out to run anymore, the cats would go find something else to play with. We ended up having to get the poor mice and take them outside to keep the cats from torturing them.

  38. Lol, belledame. I’m such a hard-hearted bitch that if my cats don’t do their job (catching annoying critters that want to eat my food before I do) then they have to move away. A cat’s job is to catch mice. Being cute and pettable is just an added benefit.

  39. Ugh, roaches. I grew up on an island off the coast of Texas (Galveston, to be specific) and no matter how clean your house is in a place like that, you can’t avoid seeing huge roaches from time to time. And good god, were they huge. Occasionally they flew at you. Despite growing up there, I never got over my instinctive reaction to seeing one, to wit: shriek, jump, run out of the room, and wimper. When I found out 8 years ago that I’d gotten accepted to my dream college, I screamed in excitement, and my mother’s response was “Calm down; it won’t hurt you!” The logical presumption being that if I was screaming, there was a large cockroach.
    Rodents, snakes, spiders, etc. never bothered me, but roaches I simply cannot deal with. I’ve gotten better about controlling my screaming, but everything else still applies. It’s one reason I hope never to have to live on the gulf coast ever again.

  40. I hate bugs. I can generally be fairly calm about killing them, except for bees, spiders, and silverfish. I’m allergic to bees and I just get freaked out by spiders, but silverfish are truly evil things. Aside from the book issue, they are just huge and ugly (and really fast). Last fall I was teaching a class when a giant one–about as long as my pinky finger–scuttled down the wall right beside my stool and computer in the lecture hall. 200 intro astronomy students had the distince pleasure of watching their instructor scream bloody murder and jump about 6 feet off that stool and land on my backside. It was humiliating, but that bug was scary.

  41. Roaches are not known to vector any disease, although they do walk through all manner of icky things. And they do like to crawl into warm, tasty ears.

    Guys, my partner reads this blog. You are fucking guaranteeing she won’t let me sleep for a month.

    That said, I grew up without roaches, and I saw my first two in her new place just a month ago. I had a visceral AUGH reaction that I very rarely get with living things, and found them exceedingly difficult to kill. And as far as I’m concerned, silverfish and house centipedes come from Hell itself.

    I’m always the one begging mercy for spiders, of course–especially on the in my pantry that helps me keep the moth population down–but, per embarrassing stereotype, mice freak me the hell out.
    I’m not sure why. My adrenaline goes through the ceiling when I see one in the house–ours used to come up through the little hole in the middle of the stove burners and peer around–and I get really unreasonably angry when I end up having to throw out more ruined food. I don’t know what it is. Snakes, ferrets, bats, spiders, I get along great with. I mean, full disclosure, I adore bats–that centipede video scared the crap out of me. Mice? Augh augh augh.

    The one thing none of y’all have mentioned, though, is probably my best war story. Google ‘Pandora Moth.’
    Couplethree inches long. Swarm every few decades. That is: for a few years, seasonally, giant moths covering whole trees and buildings so you can see nothing but moth. Giant moths–like, small-bird-sized–splattering on your windshield, crunching under the soda can as it drops out of the vending machine, everywhere. And that’s leaving aside their larvae.

    I still have nightmares.

  43. I’m not really afraid of bugs as long as they don’t touch me, but I just had to move out of an apartment a couple of months ago because of bedbugs. I didn’t even know they were real until we found some living on the headboard. They are basically impossible to get rid of (especially since the landlord wouldn’t cooperate), so we broke the lease and moved out. We had to cycle everything we owned through the freezer for a week at a time to avoid bringing any bugs with us, since they can hide in spaces the width of a credit card. It was hell!

  44. little light:

    Where i’m from we used to get that with “Tent Caterpillars”. Everywhere. On the houses, trees, grasses, EVERYWHERE. It scared the shit out of me.

    The best was the year we got the ladybug swarm though, they’re so cute 🙂

  45. Ugh, I hate roaches. And silverfish. But I don’t kill house centipedes. Sure, they’re horrifying looking, what with the huge threadlike legs that make them look about 3 times their actual width. BUT: they eat cockroach larvae and silverfish, not books, crumbs or wool. They also avoid humans and if you see one it’s usually hanging out on the wall or in the bathtub (they like cool damp places and thus will not crawl into your bed or anything.) When I see one in my living area I usually herd it into a wine glass (they can’t climb up the edges) and shake it out in the basement where it can continue to ward off any less welcome bugs.

    House centipedes = natural pest control. And they’re kind of cute once you get used to ’em.

  47. I can second Matt up there, since I’m just moved to Hawaii. Right after I moved into my little studio which got, quote, “An occasional roach because, well, this is Hawaii”, something apparently “hatched” in the wall behind the kitchen counter. I don’t consider myself particularly skittish with bugs, but killing 30 centimeter+ long cockroaches per night for several consecutive days is NOT OKAY. After repeated responses of “Well, this is Hawaii” from everyone I talked to (possibly the response guaranteed to piss me off the most), I managed to bang the number “THIRTY” into their heads. My landlady finally finally got an exterminator to come. Haven’t seen one since, but I’m wary.

    The mega-infestation was from little ones, but I did get a big one in here once during that time. Now, as I said, I’m not too skittish around bugs and generally can deal with pretty much anything bug-ish myself (with the exception of the dinner-plate-esque Chilean tarantula incident). This big flying “bzzzt”ing beast had me knocking on the door of a stranger across the hall, asking the guy if he could help little me kill the big bad bug. I set feminism back ten years, but I didn’t care – the matchbox-sized roach was dead. I live next to the trash chute, so apparently the arrival of B52 Roach #2 is inevitable. At least now I have enough stuff in my apartment to fashion a bludgeoning device.

    I can take the little ones, and a very occasional big one is permissible. What is not, under any circumstances, allowed in my apartment, is the seven-inch brand of creepy-as-hell centipedes that lurk in stone walls around here. They bite, are vaguely poisonous, and just generally suck. Gack.

  48. THREE INCH LONG SILVERFISH?!!? Crimeny! Where do you people *live*?!? Ok, I think I’m just going to stay up here in the frozen northland where things DIE in the winter. *sigh*

    Definitely second the “spiders, especially jumping spiders” are cool. Or, fifteenth it, really. We have a moratorium on spiders in the house in the winter, and in the summer we just catch them and toss them outside. We have also had some simply gorgeous garden spiders in our yard the last couple of years — they get practically worshipped.

    Now that I realize that centipedes are predators and EAT silver fish (which eat books), I may have to learn to live with them. *beat, beat* Nope, don’t think I can do it. It’s the legs. *shudder*

    The other bug that will make me shriek and act embarrassingly stereotypically “girly” is earwigs. Bleah!!! It’s the pincers on their butts, I think. And the soft, squishy bodies. And as I understand it, they FLY, too.

    OK, I’m really glad autumn is in full, chilly swing here right now. I’ve just creeped myself totally out about the bugs. Thanks, guys.

  49. You know, I don’t really care if house centipedes are great pest control. The small ones aren’t too bad, but when they get huge, there’s no freaking way I’m letting them just hang around the house. I kill those bastards. I mean, look at this thing. There’s nothing for scale in that photo, but trust me, it was huge. The body was like 3 or 4 inches long, and with the legs and antennae it looked enormous. He didn’t live long after our little photo shoot.

    I’m fine with spiders, as long as they aren’t too big and they stay away from me. One time I was taking a shower, and I noticed a spider crawling on the ceiling above me. I kept looking up to see where it was during my shower, and finally at one point, it just disappeared. I looked down to see if it had fallen into the tub, and I swear, that fucking thing was right between my eyes. It had fallen right on my head and started crawling on my face! Not cool.

  50. I hear you on the giant house centipedes – those are creepy as hell. I’ve never seen one over 3 inches (knocks on wood) but if I did I’d have to break out the giant pinot noir glasses to dump ’em out in the basement. I don’t like them in my living space either, but as long as they stay in the walls/basement more power too them.

    It’s unfortunate that so useful a bug is so insane looking, but honestly they don’t like to come near people. Unlike spiders, which I also don’t kill but which seem to take joy in building webs near my bed and biting me in my sleep.

    Full disclosure: I fear moths. Especially the giant fuzzy kind (which I admit are objectively quite cute when they’re not dive bombing your face.)

  51. toni’s comment about appreciating the house centipede (we call them “mustache bugs”) calmed me some after reading little_light’s link, which informed me that the evil things bite. and they don’t hang out only in damp places; i found one in my pants drawer this morning. those and earwigs scare me- the first movie i ever saw was star trek, where the earwig goes into chekov’s brain and tries to eat it, which was traumatic for a 7-year-old.

    this bug thing is a very good reason to live in minnesota, where i grew up and never encountered either earwigs or mustache bugs. i can handle the mummified chipmunks my cat hides in the basement, or mice or snakes, but the bugs are too foreign to me.

  53. Oh god. I’ll be sorry I asked this, but please, what is a silverfish? I can’t google or wikipedia because there will be pictures and I will scream and hide. Is this one of those things that has different regional names?

  54. Here’s some text sans pictures from the first google hit:

    SIZE: 1/2 to 1 inch (12.7-25.4mm)

    COLOR: Brown or silver-gray

    DESCRIPTION: Silverfish are small, soft insects without wings. The abdomen has three filaments extending from it.Silverfish are not often seen by homeowners because they are nocturnal and can run very swiftly. Occasionally, they are found in bathtubs. They crawl in seeking food or moisture and can’t climb out. These insects prefer vegetable matter with a high carbohydrate and protein content. However, indoors they will feed on almost anything. A partial list includes dried beef, flour, starch, paper, gum, glue, cotton, linen, rayon, silk, sugar, molds and breakfast cereals.

    HABITAT: Silverfish normally live outdoors under rocks, bark and leaf mold, in the nests of birds and mammals, and in ant and termite nests. However, many are found in houses and are considered a pest, or at least a nuisance, by homeowners. Usually they are found trapped in a bathtub, sink, or washbasin.

    LIFE CYCLE: Adults lay eggs in small groups containing a few to 50 eggs. The eggs are very small and deposited in cracks and crevices. A female normally lays less than 100 eggs during her lifespan of two to eight years. Under ideal conditions, the eggs hatch in two weeks, but may take up to two months to hatch.

    The young nymphs are very much like the adults except for size. Several years are required before they are sexually mature, and they must mate after each molt if viable eggs are to be produced. Populations do not build up rapidly because of their slow development rate and the small number of eggs laid.

    TYPE OF DAMAGE: A household pest, they feed on cereals and non-food items such as paste, paper, starch in clothes, rayon fabrics and dried meats.

    CONTROL: Sanitation alone will not eliminate an infestation, although it may prevent new ones from starting. A large infestation usually means the house has been infested for some time.

    Residual insecticides (use an aerosol) will help to control these pests. Removing old papers, boxes, books, and clothes from the attic to basement will help remove food and hiding places. Moth crystals placed in boxes in the attic will also help.

    INTERESTING FACTS: They can go for up to one year without food.

  55. Apparently, they’re also sometimes called fishmoths.

    And there are silverfish-esque bugs called “firebrats:”

    Firebrats have a dull-gray appearance.
    Adult firebrats are about one-half inch long.
    They prefer temperatures around 100 degrees F and are found in boiler rooms and bakeries, around ovens, hot-water heaters and pipes.
    Firebrats follow pipelines from the basement to rooms on lower floors,
    living in bookcases, closet shelves, behind baseboards and behind window or door frames.
    A relative humidity of 70 percent to 80 percent is favorable to firebrats because they do require some moisture.
    Firebrats are rarely found outdoors, while silverfish may be found outdoors.
    They may habitat all year long.

  56. hahaha this is very creepy, since I’m supposed to be studying entomology at the moment, or at least pinning the things I’ve caught recently.

    Are you bug-discussing people stalking me on purpose? Okay, okay, I feel guilty.

  57. Okay, back up a second. Em: THIRTY CENTIMETER-LONG ROACHES? surely that is a typo, no? that is: -over a foot long.-

    and i’m sorry, but the idea of spiders that JUMP as in MIGHT JUMP AT ME is making me take the fetal position. i don’t care how many roaches they eat; to me this is like i don’t know hiring Charles Manson to get rid of the Mafia. only with more legs.

    i am moving into one-a-those sterile plastic bubbles and never ever ever coming out

  58. Well, I live in a country without very many cockroaches, at least in my esperience. Thank God.

    On the other hand, I’ve been in the middle of using an outdoor toilet and come face to face with one of these. He stared at me, I stared at him, and I told myself that if it crawled on my leg, I was outta there, pants half-mast.

    But it just wandered off.

  59. Is it wrong that I think “mustache bug” is the cutest name for house centipedes ever? Awwww. Well, as I said, I like ’em now and have never been bit by one. But before I got to know them, they freaked the shit out of me. And earwigs? UGH. When I was a kid people told me that earwigs did not go in ears, but then I watched a documentary on National Geographic about people in some country or other who slept in the classic “thinker statue” position to prevent earwig intrusion. They are horrible creatures that should be squished with extreme prejudice. Erm, the earwigs, not the sleeping-resting-chin-in-hand-people.

  60. Just reading this thread makes me shiver. I second the idea that centipedes aren’t just confined to bathtubs- I was lying in my boyfriend’s bed, watching a centipede on the wall, I looked away for a second and it was on the bed and then on my leg! I squealed, swiped it off the bed with my pants and squished it repeatedly against the floor- it just wouldn’t die! And this is coming from the person who has to kill spiders for my boyfriend 😀

    I’m mostly okay with spiders, though there was that one time a hundred baby spiders erupted from my bathroom ceiling… while I was using the bathroom ;/

  62. And therein lies the reason that people are suspicious of single women who own cats. Vibrators, sperm banks, and cats who kill spiders—having a man is increasingly optional.

    Cat killing spiders make men optional? I’ll have you know I only date women who can either kill or get those nasty, evil creatures out of the damned house. Having a four year old son, I have gotten really good at not expressing my absolute terror of spiders but it’s all just a show – the only way I can kill a spider is from a distance – the closer I get, the more likely it becomes I will scream – and panic.

  64. For the record, I am also deathly afraid of cockroaches. Although, I think I would be more comfortable with the larger species – especialy the hissing kind, less likely to sneak up on you.

  65. jm:

    So sorry to break this to you, but I live in MN, and the earwigs, they are *here*. *sigh* *whimper*

    I’ve never noticed them stinking when I crushed them, but I may have been too busy shrieking and jumping away whilst simultaneously trying to smash the damned thing. The creepiest thing ever was when I took stuff out to the garbage can one night, walked around the corner of the garage to peek at my daylilies (under the alley light), and encountered an ungodly number of the horrid things on the outside garage wall. Geeeeaaugh!

    Phoenician? What on earth IS that thing? it kind of looks like a cricket on steroids with Mardi Gras make up on, AND an earwig pincher on its butt. Kinda cool looking, in the abstract, but I’d probably have hysterics (no, really — *hysterics*) if it landed on me. Especially if it’s as big as my imagination is painting it….

  68. Oh, my fucking GAWD why oh why did I open this damned post? Why? Camel spiders, people. Although actually they’re misunderstood—-they eat other bugs, but still.

  69. Phoenician? What on earth IS that thing? it kind of looks like a cricket on steroids with Mardi Gras make up on, AND an earwig pincher on its butt. Kinda cool looking, in the abstract, but I’d probably have hysterics (no, really — *hysterics*) if it landed on me. Especially if it’s as big as my imagination is painting it….

    Good description.

    See here.

    New Zealand had no native mammals apart from the bat until the Maori came. This means there was a place for insects that would otherwise have been filled with rodents, and so some insects developed into mouse-size. Most of the buggers are only a few centimetres in size (although I seem to recall the ones I ran into as a kid as around 5 or 6 cm), but some are 20 sm and weigh more than a sparrow.

    Back when I was a kid, they were common around the woodpile on my grandfather’s farm, and were generally ignored after we got over the YUCK! reaction.

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