Living in Florida for almost 60 years has taught me to deal with all kinds of insects/bugs...and other critters for that matter...only ones that get to me are the giant cockroaches.
Or as the realtors down here call ‘em.....”palmetto bugs”. 😂
I now know, late in my life, that as God is my witness, Turkeys can fly.
But I had no idea Cockroaches could fly.
When I saw a cockroach fly, I was at NAS Cecil Field in Florida near Jacksonville, and was sleeping in my room in the BEQ (I was lucky enough to get a room of my own, it was a small oddly shaped room that could only fit one man!) I woke in the night to hear some odd scratching noise...it was going on in the room, and I thought “What the **** is that?”
When I turned on the light, it was the sound of the biggest cockroach I have ever seen scurrying around on the floor...I could actually HEAR it! I instinctively leaped out of bed, and wearing only boxer shorts, grabbed one of my boondockers and began chasing the thing around the small room...WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! but the blasted thing was too agile for me in my newly woken state, and I just couldn’t hit it. As it made a break to the gap under the door to escape, I nailed it.
When I hit it, the boondocker created a sickening CRACK-CRUNCH sound, and I thought “Well, that’s the end of THAT”, but as I lifted the shoe expecting to see a gooey mess, I saw a large, intact roach. For a second, it didn’t move...and then suddenly, it took to the air! It made this horrible whirring sound with its wings as it flew, and the blurring pattern of the wings seemed to create a gray sphere the size of a softball!
I can tell you, in the cramped confines of that room, it was quite unnerving!
It suddenly dropped to the floor, and ran under the door into the corridor, and I opened the door in hot pursuit in my boxers with the boondocker repeatedly striking the floor with a WHACK-WHACK-WHACK sound, but it was too fast for me and ran under the next doorway it came to!
I never heard anyone call them Palmetto bugs until I grew up, and moved away. They were roaches to us, and when you saw one, beware, because that usually meant that there was an army more of them hiding in crevices or behind a wall. Only nuclear bombs get rid of those creatures.
So of course, I hate roaches. Fortunately, we don’t seem to have them here in the Midwest. However, we have a plethora of other bugs that like to invade our homes. I hate stink bugs (box elder bugs). Normal bug spray doesn’t work on them. Rubbing alcohol works though.