I found a roach again on my toothbrush this afternoon.
I dont think it was cleaning its teeth.
And thats twice in a few months.
Which got me to thinking…
Many years ago I was having a bowl of soup (suanla tang) in a restaurant and had
got to the bottom when I found a nice juicy roach there.
I pointed it out to the owner and she let me off paying.
Not exactly terrible, but curious: in one of those “La Gauche de La Seine” coffees. I’d drunk the coffee, forgot it on my desk at work, and then the next day when I peeled off the foil top to throw it in recycling, I found one of those small German roaches inside. I persuaded myself that, since roaches are famous for fitting into tiny places, it must have fit through the straw, or through the space between the two places the straw went through the plastic lid and foil top.
I still drink those things anyway.
Most traumatic was the very first night our new cat was free in the apartment (although she’d been there for a few days), and she happily carried one of those big roaches up onto the bed. “Oh, I’m imagining that crawling feeling,” I thought the first time. I became somewhat noisier the second time.
Then there was the leech (in an Indonesian jungle) that I picked off my boot, flushed down the toilet, then re-discovered about an hour later after sitting down to go to the toilet.
Also Indonesia: I have absolutely no idea why I looked in the crotch of my swimsuit before putting it on, but I did, and I found an inch-long shrivelled up dead scorpion. I shook the swimsuit, and the scorpion fell out and scurried away.
Lucky you weren’t in China. She would have charged you extra.
Found one in my fried rice once, but it was only a little one.
The worst place to find a roach is under your foot. They don’t just squash. They sort of … explode, as a last defiant act of disgustingness.
It’s a miracle!
It’s a miracle![/quote]
Eh, it was the first scorpion I’d ever seen in the wild. How was I to know they normally look dead: but the scurrying did turn the “Ew, that would have been gross” reaction into “Holy crap that could have been really bad” (or not: I have no idea how venomous it was). The possible divine intervention comes in whatever the heck possessed me to look in my swimsuit in the first place.
On exploding cockroaches: yeah, I avoid killing them: they’re even more disgusting in death than in life. When they do show up - which isn’t very often now that we have cats - I just grab a cat, point its face at it, and leave the room for a few hours.
I pity Taiwan house cats! :lick:
It’s annoying when you’re trying to sleep and hear a cockroach moving around somewhere-but can’t find it.
I don’t think many people like cockroaches but I don’t find them especially abhorrent. Maybe it’s just my zoo oh logical inclinations, but it’s not like they’re venomous or anything (and yes, I’m aware they’ve been linked to allergic reactions). Where I grew up in southern Australia we just didn’t see cockroaches in homes much at all (huntsman and whitetail spiders yes, and maybe the odd silverfish). Northern Australia is a different story altogether and if, like me, you don’t like aircon, the tropical climate forces you to leave windows and doors open and allow free admission for cockroaches, which usually spiral into the house in flight before landing and scuttling at high speed all over the joint. I got used to the sensation of a large roach running up my leg or maybe the back of my neck when sitting on the couch - you just grab the dirty fuckers and throw them into a hard flat surface somewhere outside. Then wash your hands. No biggie. Keeping a clean kitchen and allowing geckoes to inhabit your house seems to eliminate any little ones and any kind of resident population - you’d just have to deal with the bigguns that come flying in at night when you have inside lights on.
Oh, and If you ever encounter one when in the shower just splash soap or shampoo on it and watch it die almost instantaneously.
I’ve been stung by a venomous one, but that wasn’t THAT worrying…the pain is mad crazy mad. I was stung below the ankle and in a few minutes I was clutching my thigh. It hurts like hell!
hahahahha Watch Die Antwoord’s Fatty Boom boom and see where they find a roach (well, actually a parktown prawn)
Noodle shop in Hualien with my g/f and her sister and her sister’s family, eight of us sitting around a family-style table. A HUGE roach flew in from outside and crash landed in my bowl of soup. I did a huge flinch, couldn’t help it, and KABOOM my hand flipped my bowl end over end. Soup all over everybody, stinky faces on the other customers, very big mess. I felt like such a n00b.
Yeah, I must say I feel slightly sorry for them. I mean, they didn’t choose to be cockroaches. If I find one in the house I usually scoop it up in a plastic cup and chuck it outside (the back of our house is trees and stuff). But that doesn’t alter the fact that they’re 'orrible. They’re a bit like mosquitos - they seem to be completely pointless (yes, I know mosquitos are pollinators, but they could do that without biting people en route). Do they actually have an ecological purpose?
Can there even be a bad place to find a roach? Oh wait…you mean cockroach, don’t you? 
Situation #1: Once, while yawning whilst riding a scooter a large American variety flew into my mouth and almost choked me. He flew away after I spat him out.
Situation #2: A smaller German variety almost got swallowed when I had a hit of the beer bottle that he had climbed up on. I killed him, and of course finished the beer.
I like roaches, in that I find them fascinating. Yet, that doesn’t stop me from wounding them grievously, and tossing them outside for the ants to take apart.
One must have boundaries, after all.
You have got to be kidding me.
I thought if you could cut off a head, the roach would still live for a couple of weeks.
And you’re tellin’ me a little soap and water kills 'em instantly?! :liar:
You have got to be kidding me.
I thought if you could cut off a head, the roach would still live for a couple of weeks.
And you’re tellin’ me a little soap and water kills 'em instantly?! :liar:[/quote]
We used to kill them in the Teachers’ Room by squirting dish soap on them, it burns them right up like water on the aliens in Signs. 
Maybe you’re confusing cockroaches with salamanders, dish soap with salt, and the Teachers’ Room with some creek. :neutral:
You have got to be kidding me.
I thought if you could cut off a head, the roach would still live for a couple of weeks.
And you’re tellin’ me a little soap and water kills 'em instantly?! :liar:[/quote]
We used to kill them in the Teachers’ Room by squirting dish soap on them, it burns them right up like water on the aliens in Signs. [/quote]
Jesus Wept!
And here I thought I was a sadist!
At least I give the chaps the chance of escape from the thrill of the hunt!
Some things just live because the living is good!
Some things just live because the living is good![/quote]
Surely they were here on Earth long before we homo sapiens were, and will probably inherit the Earth. Lots of flotsam & jetsam upon which to surf.
Cockroaches are pretty smart actually, they hang out with their buddies and are social creatures and can figure out stuff, seriously!
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Cockroaches are pretty smart actually, they hang out with their buddies and are social creatures and can figure out stuff, seriously![/quote]h,
That’s right, so best to wound them seriously with gross indecency, and then they will spread the word around.
“No man, don’t go in there, Joey & Peaches came out all in pieces. The ants carried them off while they were still alive!”
Heh, heh, heh!