I'm Completely And Utterly Terrified! Please Help!

[tabbysia]

They spend one to three years developing in water, then crawl out of the water to pupate. It would be odd to find one inside a house, unless there's leaky plumbing, air conditioner, roof or some other water source close by.

I'll be curious to hear what 'WhatsThatBug' website says. That's where I found the hellgrammite.

I live in an older house, so I probably have a leaky everything. I have had a lot of plumbing issues--leaky toilets, leaky pipes, etc. I also have a window air conditioning unit in the bedroom which seems to create quite a bit of moisture around the window.

I am curious as to what they will tell me too. I was browsing the site a little and discovered that what I saw also closely resembles a stone centipede. It fortunately looks nothing like a house centipede, which can live 5 to 7 years IN YOUR HOUSE. It gives me chills thinking about it.

 

[tangers40]

I am used to thinking of hellgrammites as living in streams and rivers and such....they are a common bug to mimic for fly fishermen. So not just damp spaces, but actual flowing water.

I don't know much about bugs, admittedly. But the photo to me looks much more like a typical centipede, not a hellgrammite. Hellgrammites are more stout/thick, and the one in the photo apepars to be fairly skinny throughout.

 

[Mother Dragon]

What are tree roaches? They sound terrifying. I wonder if those are what we call "water bugs" here. Those things terrify me almost more than centipedes, and they can freaking FLY! It is the stuff of nightmares.

Tree roaches are what we Texans call cockroaches. Those things are big and ugly and they can fly. One of my cats loved to hunt them and then crunch them down. It sounded gross.

One night I came home from work to find my husband in the bathroom, a huge butcher knife in hand. He said he'd heard something in there but couldn't find anything. About then the shower curtain moved and I saw a big cockroach, which I sent to wherever cockroaches go when squashed. He felt a bit foolish.

Another time I was summoned to the big boss' secretary's office. Our office had a security camera watching her office. Supposedly we'd rush in and save her from a bad guy. Fat chance. Anyway, she sounded terrified, so I went racing down the stairs and into her office. She was about 4' 9" tall but wore 5" heels to work. I founder standing on top of her desk, screeching. I thought she might have been cornered by a rabid coyote. Nope. Just a big cockroach. I found it and squished it. That really flipped her out. I don't know what she expected me to do with it. Maybe remove it and make a pet out of it. I don't know what she dit home when she saw one.

Cockroaches normally live in wood and come into houses for water or warmth. They love wood shingle roofs. When we replaced ours, they moved out in droves even though they were rarely inside the house. I guess the roofers just got used to them.

And yes, I have had one crawl on me at night. It sort of tickles. I was so sleepy I just knocked it off and went back to sleep as it flew away. I decided to deal with it in the morning. Of course, by that time, it was long gone.

Of course, even these guys pale in comparison to the Peruvian hissing cockroach, which gets huge. And yes, they do hiss.

d a

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Now, don't you feel better?

 

[tabbysia]

Nope! I think I'm going to throw up!

 

[orange&white]

I've seen an occasional "normal" cockroach, about 1" long in the house. I've never seen one fly. (I spray around the perimeter of the house twice a year...seems to get rid of them.)

Outside, I've seen huge 2-3" long roaches in Texas, that we call "tree roaches". They're scary and they fly!

 

[kashmir64]

We call them sewer roaches. When I lived in Phoenix, they would crawl out of the pipes and were around 2-3 inches long. Big and disgusting.