What a horrible experience. I was visiting my friends who were living outside Charleston, S.C., and I woke up one night with the sound of something buzzing and walking around on my head. I jumped up, and turned on the light, and discovered a big cockroach on the bed. I grabbed some kleenex, picked it up, took it to the bathroom, and flushed it down the toilet. I had to check the bedroom, and bed thoroughly before I would even climb back in and try to get back to sleep. When I mentioned it to my friend the next morning, she said, “Oh that’s just a Palmetto Bug.” I said “Honey, where I come from, they’re cockroaches!”
I recall one night about 40 years when I woke up to a squishy feeling when I laid my hand next to my head on the bed. I wondered what it was, and turning on the light I found a fat tick. I pulled the covers back and found a dozen more.
I was single at the time and my dog was sleeping at the foot of my bed. I checked him and he was covered with blood engorged ticks. We had been out fishing down by the river that day and he must have picked them up there.
Took a couple of hours to remove all the ticks from my dog and change the sheets before I could go back to sleep.