Bugs Page 2

   My brothers used to go out and catch snakes for the "snake men" and they would line those damn things up outside the back door all the time. I would have dreams that I would go out the back door and all of them were out of their cages and waiting on the porch for me!! eeewww!!!

Cynthia Homley
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I live in Clearwater and we have those nasty palmetto bugs too. They are nothing but great big overgrown raoches that fly!! They fly into your hair and get tangled-it is disgusting!! My first nite in Florida, I opened the door and one of them flew in and hit me in the face-I about packed up and moved right then and there!

Cynthia Homley
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That's what they try to call them around here, hogwash!!! It's just a giant disgusting Cockroach to me.... eeekkk!! Something's I refuse to get used to. They say they live and breed on Oak Trees, which Louisiana is in no short supply of, I will not have one in or near my home.   They also have what they call a Nutria, now that dang thing is just an over sized rat!!

D'Laine Brannan
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   It must be the heat, and the Oak Tree is just a nice shady place to live while they plan their attacks.
I live in Oak Harbor, Washington and we have loads of Oak Trees (hence the name) and we don't have any cockroaches here. Once in a while a few will make the trip in moving containers, but they don't last long. The weather doesn't agree with them.

Clarice Graham
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Cockroaches? Well Texas has some big ones too. The kind you can put a saddle on and ride the dudes.
I woke up on a small Island in the south pacific with a Rat tugging on my toenail, theres a feeling to wake up to. The bugger also opened up my bag of popcorn seeds and they scattered everywhere. I killed him!!! yeeeeeehaaaaaa !!!

That almost matches the Florida tic I found stuck on my butt cheek, That one pissed me off and I ripped him off headless. Ive been ok for the last couple of weeks now and hope for a stability in my life.

David McKillop

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   Once I did have a fondness for "Henry" bugs. That was my name for them. I had gotten a large jar and I put a little kleenex bed in the bottom. Then I got a twig for a tree for them to climb and not being sure what they ate, I put sugar in the jar too. Then I caught my first one and named it "Henry." But I was afraid that "Henry" would be lonely, so I gathered lots more and filled the jar. But since there were so many, I couldn't think of names for all them, so I had "Henry 1", "Henry 2" and so on. Then I just called them all "Henry" bugs. Well, they were in the jar in my closet (I hid the jar because my mom used to get really upset when I brought horned toads, lizards and other critters into the house) and then a week went by and I went to check on the "Henrys." They were all DEAD!!!!! Wahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!

I was so upset and crying that my mother asked what was wrong, so I told her and brought her the Henry jar. She tried not to laugh, but said they had died because they had no air. She asked me where I found so many of them and I told her...in the carpet under my bed and all over the house behind furniture and stuff. She started looking for them and sure enough, we had allot. So she called the exterminator and he came out. She told him she had an infestation of "Henry" bugs. He didn't know what she was talking about. And she said, "you know, "HENRY" bugs...those little black bugs!" He said she better show him and she did. He laughed and laughed and said why these are carpet beetles. Why did you call them "Henry" bugs. And so she explained she thought that was what they were because that's what her daughter called them. And he got another good laugh.

I made a little cemetary in the back yard and put rocks all around it and buried each one and it was the "Henry Cemetary." Eventually I got over it and the cemetary disappeared, probably with the first wind storm.

By the way, if they get in your bed, they BITE!!!   So I wondered if they were also "Bed Henry Bugs."

Cathy (Padgett) Schmeer
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As for bugs; As some might remember, my father, Norman, by vocation an engineer at the Pilot Plant on base, was an entomologist by hobby...and that means "Bug Collector." There wasn't a bug in the desert that we didn't have preserved somewhere in a collecting box. In fact, my sister Marilyn and I used to make spending money by crawling under peoples houses on the base and kill "Black Widows"...We were so young, we didn't know any better. I also remember collecting beetles around China Lake and Ridgecrest and taking them to the hut on campus at Burroughs (the old campus on Base) that passed for the China Lake Museum and giving them to the currator Darwin Teaman. Anyone remember him? Most of the stuff he had, ended up in the Maturango Museum.

   Robert Rumpp
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I really enjoyed the creepy crawlie section on high desert memories. As a kid I had a trusty cigar box that I put all my "little friends" in. I collected all day and then took them home to show my parents. Sometimes it was lizards, snakes and turtles. Sometimes it was bugs. The photo at the bottom right of the page reminded me of what a Hispanic friend of ours called "el bebe de la tierra"- baby of the earth.    (they sort of resemble a crawling baby, don't they?)

When you touched it, it cried out and sounded
like a baby crying. It was the "creepiest crawlie"
I ever encountered in the desert. I would try to
sweep them off the front porch and the sound
would just freak me out!

Pam Noyes
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