They lurk in the shadows...

Because death would've been too merciful.

How do you feel about cockroaches?

Pfft. I eat them with ketchup.
10
20%
I won't touch one, but I've never screamed at one, either.
21
43%
I'm cool until they fly at me. Then I become a little girl.
16
33%
I sleep with a can of Hot Shot under my pillow.
0
No votes
I scream so loud, the neighbors have called 911.
2
4%
 
Total votes: 49

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They lurk in the shadows...

Post by Green Gibbon! »

It is true that they've been around longer than humans and will remain long after we're gone. It's also true that they aren't terribly clean and if you find one in your chimichanga it may be time to find a new lunch spot. However, for all their menacing appearance, the fact remains that they are smaller than humans by several orders of magnitude. They don't bite or sting. All they can do to defend themselves is run like the dickens toward the nearest hole in the wall. As such, it is perplexing that they retain the ability to make grown men scream. I have seen it. It is at once comedic and tragic. What cruel twist of evolution resulted in this shameful elephant-and-mouse scenario? Did the dog-sized roaches of prehistory feed on ape babies? Such can be the only plausible explanation for such a deep-seeded, universal fear that transcends all cultures and, indeed, common sense.

Are there any present who would call themselves warriors capable of facing this diabolical menace with courage and vigor? Or shall we rank ourselves among the nutless masses?

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Post by G.Silver »

Where I live cockroaches are pretty rare--generally colder and drier up here--except in really urban areas with lots of trash to feed on (so yeah, at the local McDonald's one time..), so my first experience with one was in Japan. I keep my place pretty clean, under the theory that if there is nothing for bugs to eat, they won't come to visit, so when a rather large cockroach came in through the kitchen window I think he just got the wrong directions to a party or something.

I spotted him on the wall, and he ran under the mini-stove sitting on the counter. FAST. I could peer underneath and see him there. I had a container of anti-hornet spray that a friend had given to me, insisting that I kill the hornet who was living in the staircase up to my room who was making my friend uneasy about coming to visit. I'd sort of grown fond of the hornet. Anyway, like Solid Snake calling that nature expert guy from MGS who turned out to be Liquid Snake, I called up another friend who tells all sorts of cockroach horror stories to inquire about this stuff's effectiveness, because roach had to go.

The stuff was like dish soap, essentially, it clogs the roach's breathing holes and chokes him to death. He'd never used it indoors, but it should work on roaches as well as on hornets and other more threatening (but less vile) creatures. I fired a blast of the stuff under the stove, and out he came, scrambling all over the place at an alarming speed. I backed out the kitchen door, effectively trapping him. After a few moments, I heard the sound of something small falling onto linoleum. I peered inside and there he was, in the middle of the floor, legs flailing on his back. I let him have it at close range. He flailed for a long time (roaches don't need a lot of air, I'm thinking) and eventually went still. I bunched up a few paper towels, grabbed him, and chucked him back out the window. I haven't had any roach encounters since, but I like to think I'm ready for them.

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Post by Popcorn »

I've never seen one. But I like to think I'd win in a fight with one.

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Post by Protodude »

Cockroaches show up in my garage quite often, and I even had the pleasure of having them crawl across my BARE SKIN from time to time, which is probably the second most hardcore thing you could do to one besides eating it. So I'm not really afraid of them, but they do annoy me in the same way other bugs and arachnid do.

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

You pussywillows. Once I was sitting at my computer and when I was about to get up, I looked down at my crotch and there was a big, juicy cockroach just chilling in the shade of my balls. No telling how long he'd been sitting there.

I've never seen one fly, though. People swear to me that they do, but I've yet to witness it.

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Post by Opa-Opa »

I am the cockroach killer in my house. Whenever I hear a scream or anything, there I go to smash it under a slipper. Not my slippers though.

Once I was sitting at my computer and I felt something hit my back, like a pebble or something. I turned and saw nothing. Then again. Then again. I got up and looked around and saw this thumb-sized cockroach flying towards me. It landed on the table and pretty soon it became slipper butter.

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Post by Bo »

You answered your own question about which cruel twist of evolution has led to the human fear of roaches. The little bastards aren't terribly clean, so it's a winning strategy to avoid them. Flight is less costly than fight, as Silv's anecdote aptly illustrates. The masses aren't nutless, rather, their nuts have been desi-- er, seleted for with prevention rather than confrontation in mind. That said, anyone who can overcome that innate urge to flee like a little girl is quite deserving of respect...

I haven't had any memorable encounters with cockroaches, but my roommate's less-than-obsessive food-containing practices led to ants invading the kitchen counter in my apartment in May. I made it clear that they Were Not Welcome with chlorine bleach Maginot lines... They'd better not be there when I get back, or I'll take the battle to their homes.

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Post by Ngangbius »

Damn roaches! Damn them to hell!

I hate cockroaches so much that I almost welcome these:

Image
in my home. They are an indication that there no roach would willing(or if they did they wouldn't survive for long) to come to my home.

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Post by Wooduck51 »

Cockroaches are like any other non-threat beetle, there is no reason to fear them. Either let them happily scoot across your garage floor and fulfill their tiny purpose in life, or smash them with something and be done with it. On the other hand, meeting a house centipede while off guard may be momentarily unsettling, but they are also a non threat: <A Href="http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/iiin/housece.html"> happy house-e-pede</A>

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

That said, anyone who can overcome that innate urge to flee like a little girl is quite deserving of respect...
But mosquitos carry more dangerous viruses, are way more aggressive, and can inflict more physical damage than even the most buff cockroach on the planet, and nobody leaps across the room at the sight of a stray skeeter.

Every year I resist the urge to buy my mom a Madagascar hissing cockroach for mother's day.

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Post by Segaholic2 »

I dislike all crawling crap but none really affect me much.

Except spiders. Fuck spiders.

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Post by Isuka »

Well, I'm mostly like Opa (and I love ketchup), but only for the fact that they always show up in the kitchen. Though it gets periodically disinfected, they always come back for their eternal revenge, plus I can only find them early in the morning, when I'm busy leaving to work. We have this theory that they are coming from the sewers through the washing machine (which is some 20-something years old), but we're not sure.

While I'm definetely not afraid of them, it's not like I'll touch them if I can avoid it, simply because I don't know what places has it seen in its short life and you could get infected with "something"... but then I think about money and other people's hands... and probably it's not that terrible either.

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Post by FlashTHD »

I can't remember the last time I spotted a cockroach for myself in this house, but it's a deadly mistake if one tries it. If they don't beat it, they fast meet the broad end of whatever good, solid object I find to crush it with. This goes for any bug/insect that flies/crawls/whatever it does and I find it in the kitchen or in my rooms.

Sorta unrelated, but in our neck of the woods we've had worse uninvited guests. Like, late last year and up until I think late March, we had a big time ladybug infestation. If you consider them among the most innocuous bugs in the world, try having to live with, and keep having to swat, the little bastards for months.

They survived the winter by crawling into warmer places under our house (we later opened the cover to where the water pump is stored and found scads of them, mostly dead, stuck to the walls) and occasionally getting inside in small groups. Then when it warmed up they went to town, semi-invading the rafters in the garage ceiling and swarming around parts of the outside of the house when it was pleasant enough weather. They had a particular fetish for the windows on either end of the house and the lamp shade in the kitchen, and I had to keep opening my windows every few weeks or so to vacuum out the dead ones that had collected inbetween it and the windowscreen.

Thankfully, around the time where it was getting to me taking the flyswatter to two or three on my ceiling a day, my dad found a kind of pesticide (he didn't tell me which one) that absolutely massacres these guys. They all vanished in a matter of days.

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Post by Bo »

Cockroaches have been along for the entire span of human evolution; mosquitoes (the annoying/ dangerous kind) came along to pester us <a href="http://www.johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews ... 5.w">after we'd invented agriculture</a>.

Every summer the midwest freaks out about "West Nile," though... there was a huge panic a couple years ago in my town when some guy found a dead bird, attributed it to mosquitoes, and then told some yokels at the newspaper.

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Post by G.Silver »

Mosquitoes also come flying at you pretty much all the time, and if you don't do something about it then they bite you. You can't avoid a mosquito (except by going someplace that mosquitoes aren't) because they are just too small and stealthy. So most people view mosquitoes as just a pest that can be crushed with their bare hands--there's no "crunching" involved, and the creature didn't come unpredictably skittering out of some dark place. In most places that aren't third-world countries the threat of a mosquito is just an itchy spot for a day or two (or less), so the disease aspect really doesn't come into it. Cockroaches are also reminders that we live in filth, so there's a certain amount of guilt involved there too, surely?

Also if not for mosquitoes, how would we genetically engineer uncontrollable velociraptors?

I've heard that splatting cockroaches can be a bad idea, supposedly if its female and carrying eggs then they'll spray out of the body and make a big mess. Any truth to that?

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Post by Green Gibbon! »

But since they only inflict damage indirectly, shouldn't we be inclined to act more aggressively than fearfully? If you were a neanderthal and saw a big, fat, disease-carrying cockroach scuttling toward your cave cellar that held all the food you had to make it through the winter, wouldn't you be more inclined to chase after it and squish it immediately rather than run in the other direction then warily inch back with your longest club?

There's also the fact that the human race didn't understand the concept of bacteria and germal transfer until sometime in the 18th century.

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Post by Bo »

Merely speculating, but cockroaches have probably been around tormenting even pre-human ancestors (and probably pre-mammal), which may have been less able to club the nightmarish creatures.

Humans may not have intellectually understood bacteria until disturbingly recently, but it's a winning genetic strategy to have an aversion to harmful things (supposedly that's why we have disgust emotions and such). Infants are afraid of snakes, for example. And not just if you let them get bitten first.

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Post by Forza Johnman »

I don't think I've ever seen one in the flesh. Not sure what I'll do. I'm the person that has to get the spider out of the bath tub. But, on the other hand, for some reason I'm nervous around beetles. And not the big ones either, little buggers. Maybe it's to do with me standing on a beetle and it lived.

Oh well. I'll probably try and kill a cockroach.

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Post by gr4yJ4Y »

I think the fear of bugs comes from them being able to get just about anywhere. They can crawl up your clothes, around your ear and into your mouth while you sleep. They can find a resting place in the cup you keep in your bathroom next to the sink.

They're also rather unnatural looking. While most creatures have 3 or 4 appendages, insects typically have at least 6. You usually can't see their eyes or much of any resemblance of the kind of face we're used to.

I think I've become comfortable with seeing bugs crawl around the house. While the rest of my family usually goes about squashing them or trying to catch them in a tissue and shoo them outside, I just let them crawl around and mind their own business. It's when they start getting close to my bed or closet that I kill them.

I heard that there's a centipede that lives in some areas of Japan that will release a pretty bad poison of sorts if it's squashed, so look out for that.

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Post by Neo »

gr4yJ4Y wrote:insects typically have at least 6
INSECTS SIX, SPIDERS EIGHT
BACKYARD BUGS ARE REALLY GREAT

That being said, while I don't scream when I spot any sort of bug, I promptly kill it, to prevent it from doing stuff like lay its eggs all over my room or something.

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Post by Hybrid »

When I was younger (probably about 10 or something), I was sitting in my living room watching TV. Now, the only way to get in to or out of this particular room is through a short, narrow corridor. For whatever reason, I decided that the TV was no longer entertaining me and I decided to leave and go find something to do elsewhere. Before I'd made it into the corridor, I noticed two cockroaches sitting there. One on the floor, one a bit higher up the wall. I was just a kid, so I figured I'd do something incredibly brave and just run through the corridor, then come back with some spray.

Well, I started running, but something clicked in these guys' heads, because they went absolutely nuts. Flying around like crazy, erratically changing directions, banging into walls and my body. Like I said, the corridor isn't very long, but I came out bawling, scared out of my wits, leaving those psychotic beasts for my parents to deal with.

I've never much been fond of cockroaches since then.
I've heard that splatting cockroaches can be a bad idea, supposedly if its female and carrying eggs then they'll spray out of the body and make a big mess. Any truth to that?
Kind of related, I once semi-squashed a small fly on my window, and ruptured its abdomen. I left to get a tissue to wipe it off, and returned to find my window covered in tiny maggots. The only possible explanation I have for this is that she was carrying those eggs around when I killed her, and the eggs decided to hatch as soon as she was dead. It was really weird.

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Post by Oompa Star »

Cockroaches are everywhere at my job-site (a pet store). I have touched a few and they never bothered me.

Speaking of grown men crying over cockroaches. Granted he is gay, but still...

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Post by dictatorpants »

I think I'm more scared of flies than cockroaches, but that might be because I have to bother with flies more often. Although big, juicy cockroaches that have flown at my forehead and bounced off have given me hysterics when I was younger, I'll admit.

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Post by gr4yJ4Y »

I went to the bathroom in the dealer's room at Otakon and saw the biggest one I've ever seen. I took care of my business and the guy ran off... to the stall where my co-worker was.

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Post by Isuka »

... And wasn't this bathroom infested with empty Doritos' bags in the first place?
Just kidding!

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