damn roaches

So.. had one of the grossest things ever happen to me last night.. and this is over having a G/F puke on me.

I am sitting at work at "the pool" At Harrahs Atlantic City. This is large (but shallow) pool under a 90 diameter glass dome with live palm trees and other foliage that turns into a nightclub three nights a week. It has three things roaches like.. darkness, warm and humid, and a food source. Most of the casinos in Atlantic City are also infested due to the sheer amount of people and food that passes through (most of our clients are pretty disgusting and so are my coworkers)

So.. it is 1:30 in the morning.. I get off at 3am. I am sitting at the soundboard being bored when I spy an inch or so long cockroach scurry across the controls.. it disappears down into the board before I could do anything, so I ignored it. Ten minutes later I feel something on the back of my neck. Instinct takes over and I wound up flinging a similar sized roach onto the ground. This skeeves me out some.. so I took to standing.

10 to 20 minutes later.. I feel something under my shirt (I tuck my shirt in.. so it had to get in through the sleeves or collar) on my back... I untuck and do my best to shake it out.. disloding another roach. Now totally grossed out.. I feel another on my chest. In trying to get this one out.. I accidently squash it.

A VERY quick trip to the restoom saw the teeshirt under my polo in the trash.. but still left me completely grossed out. I left work at 2:40 in the morning (I signed in early) was home my 3:05 and my clothes were in the wash and I was in the shower by 3:07.

I still itch when I think about it

That's horrible man.

I am in and out of houses day in, day out. Most of the houses in the Ghetto have roaches.

One time at an elderly ladies house, she was having an issue with her tv in her bedroom, but the lights didn't work, so I went in with a flashlight. About a hundred of them scattered when I shined my light on the wall. I waltzed my happy ass right out the door.

There have been days that I have been so skeeved out that I call my wife and tell her to start the washing machine on hot. As soon as I walk in the door, I strip naked and throw everything in the wash and my boots out into the garage. Then I fly into the shower.

Great now I'm skeeved out again.

We have what are euphemistically called Palmetto Bugs. Take your puny-assed little roaches and feed them steroids till they are two inches long and can fly. They are everywhere. We find them in the house occasionally and Jane gets out the commercial size bug spray and goes on a hunt. It is virtually impossible to get rid of all of them, just too many all over the place. Lots of fun when one flies onto you. Then I do my version of La Cucaracha dance on them.

In reply to cwh:

I really doubt there's a single building in Dade County that doesn't have roaches.

I'd never seen a 3 inch long roach until I got to Miami.

You're pushin' providence!

I was down on The Battery in Charleston SC circa 1991 or so, my GF at the time worked till ~2AM and we decided to walk down there after she got off work. We went into the gazebo at White Point Gardens (they have a lot of high society weddings there, it gets photographed all the time) and the thing was just overrun with roaches. I mean there were THOUSANDS of them, coming out of the cracks in the masonry etc.

Oh Palmetto bugs, as a kid we used to go hunt them on the Battery in the evening. I remember waking up in my dorm room in Charleston to Roaches walking across my face. I think I need a shower.

Everytime I get the urge to work in the states, you guys always bring me back to reality. F THAT NOISE!

Hey, at least roaches aren't as bad as those damn Aussie spiders.

Roaches don't bite, sting or suck your blood, but are still among the most disgusting things on earth. And, they are everywhere.

Roaches are the worst thing to encounter when stuffed in the wall fixing a sign. It happens at each and every restaurant that isn't brand spanking new. Id rather have to scrape a dead, fried raccoon off of transformers then deal with roaches.

Napalm is your only answer.

Mmmmm....fried raccoon.

Dude. When I first started in the architecture biz, it was the 1990 recession and nobody was spending ANY construction money except the government. My first 4 years or so were spent surveying and documenting public housing projects to assess and design the necessary renovations.

I've got some horror stories. I'll just say, it didn't take long to learn that you open a door and wait a beat before going through, so they don't drop off the top of the door onto you.

This is why I don't mind the Scutigera cleoptrata that live in my basement - they keep to themselves and munch on the other bugs. Not to mention, the things can live 7 years, so some of them have probably been in this house longer than me.

I thought thread was gonna be 420, like finding roaches in yur new to you car.

I did find an Oz. when I cut open the rear quarter on a '64 Fairlane Sport Coupe

alex wrote: This is why I don't mind the Scutigera cleoptrata that live in my basement - they keep to themselves and munch on the other bugs. Not to mention, the things can live 7 years, so some of them have probably been in this house longer than me.

I had to look that one up. Yeesh, I'm fairly comfortable with spiders, but it gives me the shivers just thinking about a centipede like that.

Yeah, I'm pretty conflicted by those. On the one hand, they eat their body weight in other bugs on a regular basis. On the other hand, well, look at it.

That thing makes spiders pretty darn attractive, don't it?

Protip: in that picture, it's facing left. They're startlingly quick, which is compounded by the fact the first couple times you see them, they seem to take off in the wrong direction.

I lived with roaches a few times during my life.

I kid you not, I can smell if a house or apartment is infested with roaches or not.

The worst thing I've ever seen is a house that was infested with roaches that caught fire. The sheer number of insects that started hitting the street was amazing.

My ex and I were in Don Pablos in Toledo enjoying a conversation with a coworker and my ex's sister. The sister and my coworker sat next to the wall I could give googly eyes to my date when I noticed the pattern on the wallpaper change. There was no wallpaper.

I've got a few of those frilly bugs in my basement – they don't bother me much other than they're a bit startling.

Used to work in restaurants in Toronto when I was young... we learned to whack the crouton box to send all the roaches to the bottom.

They've got nothing on bedbugs though, those things are disgusting. I once stayed in an airport hotel in Buffalo... just as I was dropping off I felt something tickling my arm. Turned the lights on to find several bugs under the pillow. I could have shed my skin, it creeped me out that bad. I hit the laundromat before taking any of my stuff home.

There's currently a plague of them in the big city public housing projects – folks throwing out all their belongings because they're being eaten alive.

I have a roach story that blows all of these out of the water.

Friend lived in a old 1920 apartment building that was located in downtown Tulsa. Needless to say no matter what you did you had roaches. I had crashed over there one night and had left a water cup with a lid and straw next to the couch. Woke up that morning thirsty and grabbed the cup well there was something crunchy in my mouth when knowing good well that it should have just been liquid. While holding the drink I had taken in my mouth I proceeded to take of the lid and notice about six dead roaches in the cup. I then spit what was in my mouth back into the cup to reveal four more. So unless you have something that gross quit your whining about one crawling on you.haha

In reply to mad_machine:

Silly little roaches qualify for one of the grossest things ever? Soft life!

< Was once forced to suck the eyeball out of a freshly killed rabbit.