The cockroach crawled out from under the refrigerator, tipped his hat and then retreated, smirking as he disappeared. When he came back an hour later, I named him Bob. He seemed annoyed.
Afterward, I had a conversation about Bob with a friend who grew up in South Georgia. She asked, “Well, was it a cockroach or was it a palmetto bug?”
Y’all-- I’m using “y’all” here because I need some credibility with the Southern crowd when I say this -- it doesn’t matter how hard you try to re-brand the giant flying cockroaches. No amount of lipstick is going to turn a cockroach into a palmetto bug.
“Hey, they fly and they live in the palmetto trees, let’s try to rename them to make ourselves feel better.”
It’s not going to happen. They’re always going to be giant flying cockroaches to me.
I was first introduced to a palmetto bug during one of my family’s vacations in Panama City Beach, Florida. In the 1980s, those one- and two-story mom-and-pop motels were still standing and stretched as far as you could see down the Miracle Mile Strip.
We always stayed beachside, but that year the only rooms available had doors that faced the parking lot. It rained every day that week and one evening we were coming home from dinner and something large dive-bombed our heads. We didn’t see it but heard it come to rest in the palm tree outside our motel door. It was so upsetting that, like good Midwesterners,we all pretended it didn’t happen. We didn’t speak of it again until the next night when it was raining and my dad went to the dog track.
My mom, my sister and I settled in to watch TV. Soon, I saw a giant cockroach broadcast on TV and then almost immediately realized it wasn’t being broadcast. It was on our TV.
We were screaming on the bed and my mom was whacking the floor with a shoe and trying to remain calm. She told us she killed it. We wouldn’t find out until years later the giant roach had crawled under our bed. She lied to us because she realized we wouldn’t sleep if we knew. It was probably the most important parenting decision she ever made. We never stayed in a room facing the parking lot again.
My husband and I got married on July 10, 2004 and a few days later we headed to our honeymoon in Savannah, Georgia. (Yes, we were Yankees. Only Yankees would consider going to Savannah in July on purpose.)
We drove into town and I saw a woman who was waiting to cross the street had hiked her long flowing skirt up past her knees and wondered why. Then we stepped out of our air-conditioned car and my lungs seized from trying to breathe in water. Even those summer vacations in Panama City Beach as a teenager hadn’t prepared me for that kind of heat and humidity.
Our first night in town we went on a midnight ghost tour, and I wore jeans – because in my Midwestern mind it was dark and I assumed it had cooled off. The heat index was in the high 90s and I immediately regretted my outfit.
As we were walking down the sidewalks of haunted Savannah, I heard a rustling in the leaves on the ground. It was quiet when we stopped, but when we began walking, the rustling sound started back up.
I asked someone about the noise. A woman from Lakeland, Florida said this was the sound of the palmetto bugs running under the leaves. I was horrified.
The woman said roaches are common in Florida and she had gotten them inside her peanut butter jar, even though the lid was screwed on tightly. You can imagine my disgust but also terror, because in a couple weeks we were moving to Florida. (I had already found an email from one of my husband’s new co-workers about alligators and “spiders as big as your palm.” I almost didn’t go through with the wedding.) Cockroaches in the peanut butter jar? Nope.
The rest of our vacation was spent in the pool and napping, because it was just too hot to go anywhere. Three days into our trip, I found myself standing on a street corner, waiting to cross. My hand reached down to the hem of my long flowing skirt and I pulled it up above my knees. I understood.
A few weeks later we would pull into Tallahassee in the U-Haul truck, and when we opened the door, I thought we’d moved to Hell – it was that hot. Who moves to Tallahassee on July 29th? Yankees.
Two weeks after we moved in, my husband took a business trip, leaving me behind. We lived in an apartment and the maintenance man had briefly left the front door open.
I turned around and saw it on the carpet crawling away from me. It had to be two-and-a-half inches long. I gasped. I grabbed a shoe just like my mom all those years ago in PCB and pounded and pounded on it. Nothing happened. I think I heard it laughing as it crawled under a large piece of furniture.
I went into hysterics. I marched down to the rental office and two people said, “Hi, how can we help you?” and I lost it. I started sobbing and said something like: “There’s a huge cockroach in my apartment and I’m not from here, and where I’m from, only dirty people have cockroaches.”
I am aware of the difference in German cockroaches and the giant flying cockroaches. I had German cockroaches twice in apartments back in Illinois and I don’t consider myself dirty. (Cluttered perhaps but not dirty.) But we had just moved in. It was hot. I was delirious. I was a Yankee. The people in the office sent the bug guy up later that day.
I called my best friend in Chicago and told her what happened and wondered how I was supposed to sleep at night.
She said, “Well, you should sleep with the lights on because I hear they don’t like light.”
I replied, screaming, “It 2:30 in the afternoon and it didn’t seem bothered by the daylight!”
She replied, “I know, I was hoping you wouldn’t notice.”
Worst of all, the next day I realized how silly I must’ve seemed and went down to the rental office to apologize. I walked in and just like the day before they said, “Hi, how can we help you?” I told them I felt silly about yesterday and I was sorry, and they said, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I reminded them of the cockroach rant, and although they wouldn’t make eye contact with me, they pretended like it hadn’t happened. They acted like they didn’t recall me standing there snot-nosed, telling them how my husband had left me in this god-forsaken hot-as-hell and how-do-you-keep-your- hair-straight-in-this-swamp-air town. They never did acknowledge what happened. I guess there are some things Southerners have in common with Midwesterners.
After living here for 16 years I have learned a few things. A native Floridian told me the palmetto bugs live in the cast iron plants, so whenever I move, the first things to go are the cast iron plants and the palmettos.
I’ve never heard the roaches crawling in the leaves on the ground. I think in Savannah it was a symptom of a tourist town with all the bars and restaurants and dumpsters.
I’ve learned about roof rats, and although I’ve never seen a banana spider as big as my palm, it’s only because I don’t go outside in September on purpose.
A healthy fear of gators keeps me away from all bodies of water outside the ocean.
I know every house will have bugs because the winters aren’t cold enough to kill anything.
The three things I know for certain are: I will always be a Yankee, I will always screw my peanut butter lid on extra tight, and no matter how many marketing specialists you bring in to change the name, they will always be giant flying cockroaches to me.