<p>Apparently, the big ones are not just in the south. The camp in question was in NJ. My S and friends wanted to stomp a few but they were so big that nobody wanted to gunk up their shoes. I assumed when he said roaches that he meant the small ones common to most northern cities. I left all his stuff in the hot car for a few hours and then right into the wash machine.</p>
<p>Roaches are very common in Austin. My folks have an exterminator come every month to keep them under control. When I was growing up, we also had scorpions in the house (in my bed, in my sister’s hair, in the bathroom, etc.). My sister got stung once by a scorpion hiding under a balcony railing. For some reason, the scorpions finally went away so I don’t have to worry about them when we visit my parents.</p>
<p>Ok, I think my D went to that same NJ locale this summer. I was kind of hoping they were beetles not roaches, because I saw them in the room and they were big. I left the suitcases in the garage for a while, after taking out all the clothes (and washing them.) I did not see any bugs in the luggage anyway.</p>
<p>I lived in Atlanta for grad school, and yes the roaches were everywhere. There was even a coffee machine with “roach” coffee in the law school. They were in the garden, in the house, yada yada. I never saw the flying ones (thank goodness), but I think they are called Palmetto bugs, and are a somewhat different bug.</p>
<p>I also lived in NYC and in one apartment (over a grocery store), with those bait traps and the building exterminator, I only saw them occasionally. I remember looking at an apartment where they had HUGE ones in the hall (like the old pool at Emory - Ugh.) I finally moved to a NY apartment where there was little in the way of food on the ground floor and no roaches. I do have to say that I never never never have seen one at Cornell anywhere. I still go back for reunions and stay in the dorms, and none of them had them. One good aspect of the cold winters I guess…</p>
<p>It’s good to travel and hit the zoo. Once you’ve gasped at Madagascar Roaches and spiders as big as dinner plates, then the stuff around the house seems small potatoes. </p>
<p>We had geckos who lived on the ceiling in Micronesia. You wanted them because they were excellent bug eaters. But the first few months I really had the squirmies around the geckos. </p>
<p>A friend is an entomologist and he acknowledges that most people have no idea how much fauna is in their house. Most people are within 10 feet of a spider at any given time. They don’t hurt you – (well, a few species do) – and having them there is so much better than living in a chemical soup. </p>
<p>Interestingly, one health ed professional told me that she felt her stories about pubic crabs were more effective in postponing teen sex than her lectures on HIV. Crabs can’t kill you – but there is certainly an ewwww factor that can make any teen think twice!</p>
<p>Maybe I watch too much “Billie the Exterminator” but the South does seem to be more infested with various nasty bugs and critters than most of the North. And yes, everyone in Austin has roaches. I never got used to it. But I still liked it.</p>
<p>We had roaches in our kitchen cabinets in my house in rural NJ when I was a kid. They didn’t fly, and they weren’t absolutely huge, but it was extremely creepy seeing them scurry for the cracks when you turned the kitchen light on in the morning. I think we had them for at least a couple of years before the exterminators were able to finish the job.</p>
<p>More recently, in our house in Boston, we have been infested by both flour moths and bedbugs. The bedbugs took more than 6 months and well over $1,000 to get rid of. I can’t even begin to express what a bargain $29.99 is for preventing that kind of nightmare. </p>
<p>The flour moths are more of a persistent low-grade thing. We’ve been able to control them by carefully packing most foods they like (grains, nuts, and even odd things like chocolate and chili peppers) in sealed containers. But they never seem to go away completely, they’ve just been reduced to a minor nuisance rather than a plague. One nice side effect is that they’ve helped me with my arachnophobia: having some house spiders in the kitchen cabinets comes in very handy when you’re fighting off the moths, so I’ve learned to see them as friends.</p>
<p>Large flying roaches= Palmetto bugs. Some marketing genious came up with that one.</p>
<p>Roaches in Pittsburgh–at least one. lol</p>
<p>Anyone remember the old song “The Cockroach That Ate Cincinatti”?</p>
<p>We leave indoor spiders alone, even rescue them from the sink or bathtub, unless they’re black widows :eek: which get squashed. They’ve made their way inside a handful of times over the years. Black widows are really very shy and retiring creatures that only bite if they feel they are being attacked, but if our dog or a visiting small child puts a nose/hand in the wrong place, it would be very bad news.</p>
<p>Back on subject: many college students may end up spending time studying abroad in areas where there are lots of creepy crawly creatures. They may even end up eating them :D</p>
<p>Olymom, I have grown to love geckos and small lizards. I actually talk and coo at them when I see them, just so they know how much I appreciate them. I would hug them if I could!</p>
<p>As MD mom pointed out, Palmetto bugs are roaches and so are “waterbugs.” Believe me, when inspite of having a monthly service you notice one crawling up the wall, no cutesy name can obscure what the darn things really are! </p>
<p>ML, I blocked the scorpions! When we lived here ten years ago, they would show up in the house but this time we’ve not seen them. Thank goodness.</p>
<p>I’d die. I understand that I am mentally ill and require therapy, but that is just how it is. I have never had to deal with roaches. I sleep with the lights on to make myself feel better about possible encounters with the occasional house spider. We did encounter a palmetto bug in our condo in Florida once when they were remodeling and I stopped going to Florida after that. I know they can’t hurt me but the hysteria they induce before rational thought has a chance to even begin is just intolerable.</p>
<p>I am cool with lizards, though. I’ve always liked those.</p>
<p>I love lizards; they’re so cute 
MIL in FL has a much different mindset though; when we’ve been down there & one gets in their house, I gently trap it & then let it go outside. MIL however is militant and gleefully tells us about how she sprays them with bug killer until they die & turn translucent. I adore my MIL & my kids love her, but that really freaked them out about Grandma!</p>
<p>Now roaches are a different story. I am so happy to say that I’ve never had an encounter with one anyplace that I’ve lived, but I need to share some of these stories with my D so she understands the potentials of dorm living, especially if you don’t clean up & cover food.</p>
<p>Well, lets see. I’ve lived in a lot of places in my 50 odd years and dealt with a lot of varmints. Some lowlights:</p>
<p>Mississippi: Fire ants—they terrified me as a small kid. The little lizards were cute, but the frogs my brother chased me with really freaked me out and I still don’t care for them.</p>
<p>Wisconsin: Between the no-see-ums and the 'skeeters the size of small airplanes, summer evenings were always lots of fun.</p>
<p>Virginia: At college, the sophomore guys were largely confined to a set of off-campus “dorms” that were old nursing quarters at the local mental hospital. They would annually host a campus-wide party where one of the highlights were the cockroach races. The racers were the biggest and meanest ones they found in the basement. Also remember spending my time on female floors as a designated “Bug Killer” since I didn’t have any real qualms about squashing anything with six legs that was smaller than about an inch long. But there was one huge waterbug that I just couldn’t kill in the hall bath one year …</p>
<p>Illinois: My grad school apartment building became seriously infested with cockroaches one winter. My roomie and I kept rolled up newspapers around for swatting them while the landlords were having the whole building sprayed once a month or so. When the warm weather finally it, the bug spray finally seemed to get ahead of the roaches. The landlords kept the bug spraying routine up the whole rest of the time that I lived there. But just as we were getting done with roaches, the mice problems started. They finally ended once I got a cat.</p>
<p>NJ: I, the cat, and my new (and still current and only) husband moved into an old house near Princeton that had been chopped up into apartments. No bugs, but big mice and squirrel problems. The squirrels got into the attic area right above our apartment and would run around at night making very loud noises. The mice got into the food in the kitchen—yuck. Took the cat about 6 months to finally get rid of the mice while we were being extra vigilant about how the food was stored. The highlight was coming home one night when the cat had a mouse trapped under the pedestal of our table. DH took pity on the mouse and moved the cat to the bedroom and tried to rescue the mouse, which promptly ran up my H’s leg under his pants. I didn’t know that men could shrek at quite that frequency.</p>
<p>That same cat got a chance to de-mouse two more houses in IL as well as our current house in Buffalo before he died at the ripe old age of 17 1/2. And my husband had to deal with a possum in our garage in IL once as well. Boy are they ugly.</p>
<p>
This is exactly how I am about spiders, or used to be–I’ve gotten a bit better over the years, though I can still react quite amusingly if I’m caught off guard by one. My wife still giggles about the time we got into the car at the end of a summer evening at a friend’s house. I started the engine and had gone about twenty yards when I screamed bloody murder, stopped the car with a jerk, opened the door and crawled sideways out of the driver’s seat as if I was trying to win a limbo contest. My wife thought I had gone completely bonkers. A spider, who must have been on the ceiling when we got in the car, had started descending on a bit of silk just inches in front of my face. I wouldn’t get back in the car until I was sure the spider had been ejected.</p>
<p>RobinSue: the story of the mouse under the table pedestal & your DH just had me cracking up in my office. Thanks so much!</p>
<p>“I do have to say that I never never never have seen one at Cornell anywhere.”</p>
<p>I guess they were all at my slum dwelling on Dryden road across from The Royal Palm.</p>
<p>I worked a winter in Austin, Texas, and was told that the pointy-toed cowboy boots are for killing roaches in the corners of the rooms.</p>
<p>True?</p>
<p>Hmm, I can’t see guys wearing cowboy boots worrying too much about a few roaches running around. (I met a real, 73-year-old cowboy in Arizona last week. He had signs around his ranch such as, “Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.” Nice guy to talk to, though! They used to drive covered wagons and take cattle from Winslow to Phoenix.)</p>
<p>There was one wing of my college dorm infested with roaches. They used to have races for entertainment when they had collected enough live ones.</p>
<p>
I’d APPRECIATE the past tense please! Everyone in Austin used to have roaches, (and those lovely little cardboard roach motels, and trails of Boric Acid everywhere). But with the advent of new insecticides, the roaches are all gone. The scorpions, however, are not… :eek:</p>
<p>Really, the roaches are gone from Austin? Wow, that’s good to hear! DS will be happy.</p>