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OK, so last night I saw this bug in my room...It flies, and has really long antennas (twice it's body size) brown with black spots and kind of like a body of a cricket I suppose.  I sprayed him with disenfectant and Windex.  He seemed dead, and I couldn't touch him, not even with a paper towel.  I was going to wait for my roommate to dispose of him.  I have this crazy thing about certain insects and spiders...and this one got to me.

I wake up this morning and there is no sign of this insect...which is amazing and worries me.  How can he not be dead?  where did he go?  Did he crawl in my mouth while I slept and it is going to be an invasion like Creepshow's cockroaches???

I live in Florida...Palm beach county and trying to figure out what the hell this thing is.  If any of you have ideas let me know...please!

Sounds like a cave cricket, aka camel cricket, but they don't have wings.  Some species of roaches could be taken as crickets and do have wings.

Either way, it was probably dead and something else just took it away to eat it.

I once crushed a large horsefly in a sliding window.  As I watched, the damned thing spawned maggots which proceeded to push the fly more than four inches before I decided to use a kleenex to kill them and removed the fly.  

Also, Windex & disinfectant likely only stunned it....

check this link.  It should help you ID your critter.  

http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/bugclub/bugid.html

Are you sure you are not testing a Bad Movie script idea on us?

I wish it was so my friend.  Hmmm, I said "my friend"  don't you hate that expression "buddy", ""pal", "my friend" from a stranger? lol.  Anyway still no trace of him but no legs or antenna stuck in my teeth.

Windex & disinfectant!?
How cruel!
Evil looking bugs deserve a quick death.  :)

Shadowphile Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I once crushed a large horsefly in a sliding
> window.  As I watched, the damned thing spawned
> maggots which proceeded to push the fly more than
> four inches before I decided to use a kleenex to
> kill them and removed the fly.  

You know the same thing happened to me but I used regluar bug killing stuff like Raid. I sprayed it and it laided a bunch of maggots that were still moving through the spray until I soaked up the entire area.

So you're a bug-a-phobic, loyal1? So am I. It's really humiliating sometimes, because many people don't share our problem. But it has its good side, bleieve me. Just watch "Mimic" or the Masters of Horror episode called "Sick Girl", and notice how easily your adrenaline starts pumping.

My cousin used to use the electric starter button from an old gas grill to shock and stun the bugs that gathered on his patio door. Kind of like a mad scientist running nefarious experiments on the bugs. Seeing how many shock it took to kill the big ones, for example.

The bug kingdom is probably plotting some nasty karmic revenge for him even as we speak.

The bug kingdom is probably plotting some nasty karmic revenge for him even as we speak.

Great..and the rest of use will probably get caught in the 'crossfire'

Yaddo 42 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My cousin used to use the electric starter button
> from an old gas grill to shock and stun the bugs
> that gathered on his patio door. Kind of like a
> mad scientist running nefarious experiments on the
> bugs. Seeing how many shock it took to kill the
> big ones, for example.

Even better...
Back in high school I was good friends with a guy named Larry King and he was a genius when it came to disassembling electronics and tinkering with them.
He took a small blue colored radio transistor case, removed the contents, re-wired them & added a photocell of some kind with other electronic parts.
He then added a regular plug-in cord...the kind we all use on electrical devices.
He filed down the two prongs that normally go into any standard outlet so they were small "nubs".
Once, he tried explaining to me how it worked and even took it apart to show me but I was dumbfounded.

When switched on, it made that super high whining sound...like a camera does. (this was from the photocell)

Once fully charged, all you had to do was touch those nubs to anything and "ZAP!"
He brought it to school once and touched it to my locker...POW!
It made an almost deafening pop and a bright spark.
It left a black mark on my locker that couldn't be rubbed off and remained there until I graduated.
As far as I know it's still there.

Behind his house was a large backyard that was infested with Boxelder Bugs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxelder_bug)
I remember bringing out a glass of water and pouring a small amount on the ground to make a little puddle.
We'd grab one of those bugs and put it in the middle of the water.
It would try to swim like mad to reach safety...its legs skittering all over the place.
That's when Larry would fire that device of his up and touch the nubs to the water.
The bug would literally be electrocuted and would clench up and shake.

Fun stuff!

For some reason, when Ash mentioned the Karmic revenge thing, I started thinking in that Simpsons episode where diminute people enter Bart's head and reenact the trench run from Star Wars behind his eyes.

Now imagine the same thing with flying beetles. Ouch.

There are a number of different species of grasshoppers in Florida and some of them have the appearance of what you describe. Either way, it is most likely harmless.

My roommate (who is male) said he found my bug I told him about crawling near my door.  He said it looked "pretty sick" and was able to kill him with ease.  But even he said "That things was #@%* up!"  He too never seen anything like it and even exagerated it's size from what I remember.  i think it's the antenna that throw you off.  I feel bad though...I wish he was dead like most insects are when I do that within a matter of minutes.  I feel like he suffered more than any bug should.  

If I only wasn't so phobic!  I couldn't touch the thing...not even to dispose of him when I thought he was dead.  I could hardly poke him with a pen for even that was too close.  He wasn't right.  He was like nothing I have ever seen and my roommate agrees.  Even he was weirded out by it.

I wonder what he was...

Sounds like a "Longhorn Beetle" -- I'm too lazy to look up the Latin --
     No reason to kill them -- just scoop 'em up with a bit of newspaper and out the door he goes.
I've pretty much stopped killing things like that -- even the sometimes enormous spiders we get in the house here, we just call "scary friends" & push to one side if bothersome, but they usually manage to find their own way outside in a day or 2 -- Hell, I used to do creatively horrible things to katydids and daddy-long-legs, etc., For some reason, the older I get the less compelled I feel to do that --
peter shatner/denny johnson

http://www.whatsthatbug.com/

The description does sound like some sort of wood boring beetle, but hard to tell without a photo or something.  Heck, it could have even been some sort of camel cricket, depending on what loyal's experience with crickets is.

We used to get all sorts of little fellows in our house in GA.  Wolf spiders were quite common. I would often scoop them up with my hands and drop them outside, even the large ones.  This is one spider, either a thin-legged wolf spider or a fishing spider, that was on our kitchen screen.  That is Katie's hand.

(http://www.badmovies.org/request/wolfspider1.jpg)

Beautiful Arachnid!!
I used to like the Golden Garden spiders when I lived in Virginia, but never encountered a really fearsome spider in the wild until I met the "Bird-eating" spiders of India -- as big as two hands put together.
peter johnson/denny crane

http://wildflowers.jdcc.edu/Dobsonfly.html

Don't think this was it but pretty close from what I remember.
I am pretty OK with crickets..I mean, I saw a Cricket in Times Square when I was a kid. :) I was quite a Tom Boy in my day and most spiders and snakes didn't bother me.  I use to catch snakes all the time.  I don't know where the bug fear stemmed from, but not all bugs just evil looking bugs and cockroaches.

You know, this thread has led me to the only real logical conclusion:

That these creatures are mutant insects that were originally created in the back of your microwave and are currently breeding in your mattress.  In fact, I can almost make out their scuttling now...

It really is the only true answer to this query after all...

If it has more legs then a 4, i'm not gonna make friends with it.
I may just reach for the hammer...

I don't mind most bugs.  Beetles, roaches, blah blah.  But spiders.  I don't care how tiny and "harmless" they are.....I just cannot handle them.  Andrew - Katie is a much better woman than I, I would probably never use that door/window/whatever EVER again.  

I don't jump and scream and throw fits.  I silently run like hell in the other direction as fast as my short lil legs can carry me.  I don't kill them if I am faced with one.  I avoid the room where he is and figure, if I leave him in peace, he'll leave me in peace.

That's all well and good, but when the creature is in my bedroom where I sleep...them's fightin territory.  I once found a nice big hairy spider, not only in my room, but chillin next to me in my bed.  I never knew I could jump and move so fast.  It was like the whole mother and baby under the truck situation.  I was speedy gonzales!

I would have actually preferred seeing a spider.  At least I know what they are.

loyal1
I don't know the bug you're picturing here, but my guess is that I was probably right in saying "Longhorn Beetle", as this picture looks very much like one --
they won't bother you
peter johnson/denny crane

Peter wrote~

"I don't know the bug you're picturing here, but my guess is that I was probably right in saying "Longhorn Beetle"

Here is a pic of this bug here.  Looks just like him.

http://facweb.furman.edu/~perrytravis/TPerryWebsite/Hermosa/Pictures/Longhorn.jpg

Nice bug.  Knowing that it is harmless is good.

I work doing emergency spill response.  I was returning from a call at 1:00 am, during which a praying mantis had landed on my coveralls.  I had brushed him off my shoulder and forgotten about him.  He must have clung to my back because while heading home, he jumped onto the face of the driver, who almost rolled the pick-up....

He said afterwards that he was very proud of his ability to 'scream like a girl'.

Bugs are just cool --
thanks for the followups -
peter,.