Unidentified Insect...

[loyal1]

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!

[akiratubo]

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.

[Shadowphile]

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

[ulthar]

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

[loyal1]

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.

[Ash]

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

[BeyondTheGrave]

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.

[Neville]

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.

[Yaddo 42]

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.

[Fearless Freep]

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'

[Ash]

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
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!

[Neville]

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.

[odinn7]

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.

[loyal1]

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...

[peter johnson]

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