Bugged

In case you haven't heard, everything grows bigger in the south (including my hair, thanks to the humidity), and the bugs down here are no exception. Our first encounter was the day after we arrived while storing some items in the garage/basement (yes, they are one and the same, our house sits on top of the garage which is built into the earth). We open the door to the cool, dark garage and out of the corner of my eye I see what looks like a large spider scurry and hop across the cement floor. But before panicking, I take a good look at the thing and I can see it's not a spider - it has the body of a spider, but it's legs are more like that of a grasshopper or a cricket. Light brown in color with tortoise shell markings, its little antennae move back and forth trying to adjust to the bright light we just let in. Definitely not a spider, but what is it?

Curious and feeling brave (my bug-a-phobia appears to largely apply only to spiders) I walk over to get a closer look and just as I lean down to within two feet of it, it jumps half that distance right up in the air and straight at my face! Naturally I scream like a little girl while Nicole laughs and I decide I've had enough of mystery bug for one day and close the garage door.

Thanks to a visit from our landlord that evening, we learn that the mystery bug is commonly called a "cave cricket." Like its name implies, it primarily live in caves, but some do find their way to cool dark basements like ours. Further research told me that they are not from the same family as crickets and are found on every continent on the planet. According to Wikipedia, "Cave crickets have very large hind legs with 'drumstick-shape' femora and long, slender antennae. They are brownish in color and rather humpbacked in appearance, always wingless, and up to two inches long in body and 4 inches for the legs." The most interesting fact about cave crickets is since they live in deep dark caves where nothing else really exists, they often go for long periods of time without food and have been known to eat their own extremities. Next time you tell someone you're so hungry you could gnaw your own arm off, think of our little cave crickets and be grateful you aren't really doing just that!


My mom and I used to sing "La Cucaracha" together when I was young, but it wasn't until high school that I found out that we were singing about cockroaches and it wasn't until last week that I became more acquainted with them then I care to be. See, down here, we have "palmetto bugs", which is just a really nice way of saying "a cockroach the size of your head." They are huge, they are fast and they are everywhere at night. Returning home from the evening, they scurry from the porch light. I even saw one run across the road and I was standing at least ten feet away. Yeah, they're THAT big. And apparently quite abundant. We noticed what looked like very large ant traps in our kitchen and closet downstairs when we moved in and later realized they were cockroach traps.

We have yet to see one in the house (I'm furiously knocking on wood) but I know that it is inevitable and I'm bracing myself for it. I've seen horror stories of them scampering across people in their sleep. Someone even started a support group online for those who are deathly afraid of palmetto bugs. I may sign up.

By the way, I hear mosquito nets make GREAT Christmas gifts...

Oh, speaking of mosquitoes, they aren't necessarily bigger down here, but they are insanely voracious. The night we unloaded the truck and walked around the yard with our landlord, I ended up with 31 mosquito bites, all from the knee down! And when I get a mosquito bite, I might as well have poison ivy because I itch constantly. I tried calamine lotion, rubbing alcohol, Benedryl pills and creams - nothing worked.

Finally I went to Whole Foods in search of a natural remedy and as I'm looking at the various creams and gels with ingredients like tee tree oil and calendula, an employee walks up with a customer, grabs one of them off the shelf and says "here, this should do the trick." I glance over to see that the woman's legs were completely covered in bites like mine. Grateful for the gel the employee picked out she remarked how miserable she was and how she was up half the night. I immediately turned to her and said "me too!", had a bonding moment right there in the homeopathic medicine aisle, grabbed the same recommended gel and went home with high hopes. And you know what - it worked! Cooling and refreshing, I slabbed it on every two hours on the nose and managed to get a decent night's sleep. Although it was days before I was completely itch free, I highly recommend Bitecare Gel by Boiron. The calendula in it acts as a healing agent, they echinacea relieves inflammation and the ledum palustre (whatever that is) relieves pain and itching.