If You’re New to The South, There’s One Thing to Fear!
If you grew up in the South or have lived here for a while, you know that every year around this time, the palmetto bug comes out to play. Sometimes, they want to play in our homes, and that’s not cool!
Let’s establish one thing before I move forward because it’s something that drives me crazy: Palmetto bugs ARE cockroaches. The only difference between the two is size and the rate at which they multiply. The palmetto bug is nothing more than the Hulk version of a tiny German cockroach that lives in some people’s kitchens, and they don’t multiply at the same rate as the German cockroach.
Now that this is established, my Southern brothers and sisters can’t live in denial by casually calling it nothing more than “a type of beetle.” NO! It’s a cockroach, and it’s a terrifying giant one!
In the mid-’90s, after moving from NY to NC, I remember seeing them outside on occasion and thinking, MOTHER OF GOD! THAT’S A GIANT COCKROACH!!!! WTF!?!? But the locals just brushed it off as nothing more than a beetle, and I almost drank that Kool-Aid until I had a couple of run-ins of my own with them as I slept. Memories I won’t relive here because I have serious PTSD when I think about them.
There’s nothing on Earth that scares me more than these bugs. I can hold spiders, grab a snake with my hands, capture a mouse, and deal with any creature put in front of me, but these things send me into a place where my mind shuts down with fear, and my body intensely freezes up.
If you’re new to the South, you’re going to deal with them. Unlike the tiny cockroaches you dealt with up North, it doesn’t matter how clean you are, they’re getting into your home at some point, and chances are, on at least one occasion, it will be when you’re asleep! You’ll encounter them under your sheets, on your body, or above your head as they crawl out of the vents. One may crawl up your body and under your clothes, on your face, or even in your mouth.
All of those scenarios happened to me, and now I have to stop writing before the tears start.
You’ve been warned. Welcome to the South!
By the way, find yourself a good-sized book to keep nearby like I did. They come in handy when it’s time to crush their bodies, and unless you hear a crunch, they’re not dead! Unlike the one under this book.
