roaches, palmetto or water bugs?

[mrbill]

What do you call them in your neck of the woods?

Are they the same insect or what?

Are they out to take over thw world?

Water bugs here in north texas. Daughter calls them giant roaches. They are too big to check into a roach motel.

With smart cats boric acid works. Roaches can't fart, it makes gas and they explode.

Down the drain with hot water doesn't work unless there's a garbge disposal.

Not squeemish about using the foot, remember that they feel the air pressure coming and adjust your aim.

These little critters engage my hunting instinct.

on edit: typo

[trumad]

1. They're God's creatures

how can you hurt those poor innocent animals? ;-)

[mrbill]

2. they are innocent outside the house

come inside and they get their head on a toothpick.

[Bake]

3. God's creatures or not

I'm gonna crush the m'f-ers if I get the chance. They're out to take over the world.

Bake

[trof]

4. To homeowners they're ROACHES.

To realtors showing a house they're "Palmetto Bugs".
Doesn't that sound nicer?
Inside or out, they die!
An outside roach is just on his way inside.
Like the boric acid/no-fart thesis.

[nuxvomica]

5. Have you ever tried orange oil cleaner on them?

I use it as an insecticide around the house because it's safe for the cat (and me!) but it'll stop wasps dead and when you spray it on an ant, all this foam starts coming out of them. I'm wondering what it might do to la cucaracha.

[SaintLouisBlues]

6. Roaches in the city, water bugs in the 'burbs

That's the joke in St. Louis. I believe that the big, dark brown ones are known as America
cockroaches, that that a lot of people call these waterbugs.

It is those smaller, speedier reddish ones (German cockroaches) that drive people to distraction. The
big ones are easier to control and don't seem to infest in the large numbers that the Germans do.

[morningglory]

13. Any soap kills a roach,

interferes with the waxy coating on their exo-skeleton. They turn right over and die. One time I sprayed windex on a roach and it went insane and stalked me for hours. Once I was visiting someone and while they were out, I put a dish in the dishwasher. There was a big cockroach crawling around in there. I had never owned an electric dishwasher, so I didn't know they do not tolerate regular dishwashing liquid. I grabbed the dishwashing liquid and tried to squirt him. One drop kills them immediately. Of course the thing ran around among the racks and dishes and I had to squirt quite a bit of the soap before I got him. So then I turned the machine on and it was like a scene from the Woody Allen movie where he was a robot in the future and made the custard that glooped and got bigger and filled the whole kitchen. I mopped up soap suds for hours.

[nuxvomica]

15. Windex? You must be Greek

;-)

[caledesi]

7. Here goes...In Virgina, they are called Waterbugs and they are huge!

In Florida, they are called roaches, unless you are old and rich, then they are called Palmetto bugs (they don't like to use the term "roach."

[FlaGranny]

8. There's a critter called a water bug

and if you see one don't touch it. They are big nasty critters and they can bite. Definitely not a roach.

http://www.insects.org/entophiles/hemiptera/hemi_005.html

[ForrestGump]

12. These dudes are true bugs

'Bugs' as a generic term for insects is, zoologically, totally wrong. Not that entomologists don't still call 'em 'bugs' at times.

[morningglory]

9. Water bugs and Palmetto bugs are what we tell the tourists they are,

actually I don't even know what a water bug is, and here in Florida we have an intimate familiarity with MANY bugs. Palmetto bugs are real bugs: large, sectioned, wingless slow-crawling fat things that actually live in palmetto plants out in the woods, but there are 2 kinds of roaches in my mind: BIG ones and little ones. I think the little ones are called German cockroaches. (Don't know what they call them in Germany) The big ones eat the little ones' eggs. If you kill the last big one, you will get infested with little ones, especially if you buy a used appliance in Florida. Or borrow a radio. I live in Florida. Ask me anything.

[FlaGranny]

14. Oh yeah?

;-) - did you ever get an infestation of those huge carpenter ants? Believe it or not, I had them once in a table lamp and another time in a radio. I lived very close to the woods then. Then another time swarms just started coming out of the walls. They are nearly as bad as termites.

[ForrestGump]

10. Probably all used interchangeably, but in the US the

three most common cockroaches are the classic American, the smaller and darker Asian/Oriental, and the way smaller German. The Oriental cockroach is more often called 'waterbug,' I believe, but all species are called waterbug at different times in different places. In other words, the common names are largely meaningless - that's why we have scientific names. They're all cockroaches and the 'polite' term in some areas of the South and Caribbean is 'palmetto bug.'

Here's some info on a few US species:

http://www.allabouthome.com/tips/pests/cockroaches.html

And this next page is pretty interesting. A mong other things, cockroaches relieve us of our pesky nail-care duties:

"They can feed just as freely on...the finger and toenails of sleeping humans."

And this appetite-inspiring tidbit:

"Cockroaches have the habit of dropping their feces wherever they go. They discharge a liquid both from the mouth and openings on their body, which gives off a "cockroach" odor to food and dishes they walk over. Believe it or not, cockroaches find this foul smell very attractive."

http://ag.udel.edu/extension/information/hyg/hyg-08.htm

Finally, just found this page on the etymology of cockroach names - that's right, entomological etymology:

http://www.cnf.ca/naturecanada/autumn00/nc_f00_words.html

[notadmblnd]

11. They're Roachs

discusting, nasty, disease carrying pests and here in the midwest is a sign of filth in a house. HouseFlys are just as bad.