Elmer, the World’s Largest Bug
I cry if I accidentally kill an ant. I get upset when Glenn kills a spider instead of carrying it outside. I don’t want to live with bugs, but I don’t want them dead.
However.
Last night, I walk into the bathroom, and the WORLD’S FREAKING LARGEST BUG is racing around the floor. After some screaming and crying, I go and get my camera. It’s HUGE.
(I had to show it to you.)
When I return, it’s running at speeds of ten miles per hour. I’m bouncing on my tiptoes, poised to dash away at any second, should the bug come toward my feet.
(You’ll understand why the pictures are blurry.)
The picture has been enlarged so the bug is at ACTUAL SIZE. Really. THIS IS HOW BIG THIS BUG WAS. Exactly. Precisely. No exaggeration. (The pic may be on the small side, actually.)
Is it three or four inches long on your screen? AS BIG AS YOUR HAND? Yes, that’s how big it was. Here’s another picture:
Do you SEE how long those LEGS ARE?! Arizona bugs are FREAKING HUGE. If one of those things gets in my camper I am packing up and leaving for Ohio.
You think I’m kidding.
I run and grab the owner, and he comes back with two brooms. I stand and cringe and cry and squeal in the hallway, and I hear about twenty bangs. TWENTY BANGS! Over and over! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
It’s finally dead.
The toilet flushes.
The shower turns on. He has to run the shower for FIVE MINUTES to get rid of the bug goo. Five minutes!
When I return to my camper and tell Glenn, he says, “You killed Elmer! I can’t believe you killed Elmer!”
“Elmer?” I shriek. “You know this bug? Are you teasing me?”
“Yeah, he was in the men’s bathroom for a while, then the women’s, and back to the men’s. You haven’t seen Elmer before?”
I stare at him. I am speechless. It takes me fifty-seven seconds to say, “No. No. No, I have not seen Elmer before.”
“I can’t believe you killed Elmer,” he says.
I am still speechless. He thinks I am done with the conversation and rolls back over in bed.
He says again, “I can’t believe you killed Elmer.”
I finally cry, “I can’t believe you named a giant bug!” I’m thinking, Where is my protector? Isn’t he supposed to be the noble remover of all icky things? What happened to the code of chivalry?
“I didn’t name it,” he says. “Mr. and Mrs. X named it. You killed their Elmer. It’s been hanging out in the bathrooms for months.”
Okay, I’m a little sorry. Okay, I’m really sorry. Please forgive me. I don’t want to be a killer. It’s against my religion. But did you see the size of that thing? It was him or me!
Would you have killed Elmer? Do you know what Elmer is? AND WHY THE FRICK-FRACK WOULD SOMEONE NAME A GIANT BUG?????????????
Postscript: I’m told it might be a Palo Verde Borer Beetle. They can get up to six inches long and THEY FLY.
What do you think? Here’s a picture with some perspective, so you can see how HUGE it is:
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Natasha Fondren is a writer traveling the U.S. in a camper with her four cats. She is currently enjoying the lizards and desert heat in Arizona.
One time I came up on my screened porch and a spider had webbed the whole thing. I shit you not, it was straight out of a horror movie.
I found the spider (quarter sized) hanging on the wall. So I thunk and thunk what to do. (SPIDERS, EEK!) I knew the husband would laugh at me for not taking care of it. (This was back in our 20s when he still laughed at me. He’s since learned that laughing at my phobias is a Bad Thing.)
So I got the broom and came in to get it and the freaking spider, still hanging on the freaking wall, leaned way back and FREAKING LOOKED AT ME OVER ITS SHOULDER.
Needless to say I waited for my husband to get home.
Ohmigosh, that sounds awful! Wow! And HILARIOUS! I believe you! HAH!
I would’ve waited too, Betsy, but I’m pretty wimpy when it comes to bugs.
I wouldn’t kill elmer there, because of the mess it would cause. I’d scoop him up and oust him vigorously, though. When beetles are big enough to CREAK I get weirded out.
You’d TOUCH him? Yeek! I’m not sure I could do either! You are brave, Written!
This is fricken hysterical.
It was fricken terrifying!
Man, that is just nasty!! The biggest thing I’ve seen up here is a wolf spider, and that’s big enough!
I totally would have been screaming my head off, no lie.
And yes, men are supposed to be the noble removers of icky things, but frankly I usually do my own.
Holy crap, I looked that up Elizabeth. Yikes! I don’t like spiders with fur. Something about the fur totally freaks me out.
You seem the type to do your own. You are one strong cookie!
See why you shouldn’t live in one of those small houses that you mentioned in your last post? Imagine him stomping around in there, huh.
Yep, I’d have killed the mother. Bugs like that have no business in the shower.
P.S. Get out your Raid. I think that’s a cockroach.
Oh man, Kath, I’d be trembling on the roof! It seems that it was a cockroach. *sigh*
Oh dear God!!! You know how I feel about bugs. Holy… No, I wouldn’t have killed Elmer…I would got Mary to kill Elmer. No, just kidding, I wouldn’t have made Mary kill him. I would’ve managed to throw my shoe at him or something. Before he freaking FLEW AFTER ME!!!!! Jesus, do you realize what a close call you had? Nothing that big can fly. I don’t want to think about it. Hey, thanks for the post. Thanks a lot. I’m not moving south or west.
Throw your shoe? Eric, it was BIGGER than your shoe! Or at least bigger than my shoe!
LOL! But there are all these cute lizards down here.
I would have screamed and either killed it myself or called my husband. I don’t kill spiders, but other bugs . . . If they are outside, they’re safe from me. Not inside. And I for sure wouldn’t name them.
Edie, I know! Who names a giant cockroach?! I give them a wide berth outside, but inside, man, I freak out.
I thought at first it was a cockroach. Is that a beetle?
I’m like you I usually don’t freak out over bugs, but this might have made me throw my flip flop at it.
The authorities have told me it is a cockroach. A giant cockroach. I had no idea they could get that big! Yikes.
Your actual pics of the bug look like a cockroach to me, which means extermination IMO.
You don’t want more of them around, right? Ick!
Angie
Especially considering cockroaches are BORN PREGNANT. I hope it’s not a cockroach.
Oh man, Written. That’s insult to injury!
Yeah, Angie, and they just had the exterminators out!
Your FB post was hysterically funny, Natasha! HUGE! HUGE!
I draw a line over bugs in the house. Then I have no compassion. Splat!
I was freaking out, Bernita! I guess my line is if it’s bigger than my palm, then I lose it, LOL.
Thats what we call a Palmetto bug down here. It’s a form of cockroach but it breeds in trees and can fly.
Yikes, Charles! Oh man. I would’ve lived happily never seeing one.
We have some huge cockroaches where I live that fly too. I HATE them. I don’t think they get as big as Elmer, but they’re up to about 2 inches long. I try to spray them with bug spray instead of stomping them because they’re so big and make such a huge mess if you squash them. Ick! Now I have the heebie-jeebies!
Yuck, Erin! I guess there are drawbacks to all this beautiful sunshine and warm weather!
I totally have the heebie-jeebies! Every time I closed my eyes that night, I saw it. I can still hear its feet clattering as it raced across the floor!
The size would be more understandable for me if it were hand – would you mind getting another shot?
ROFL, Lisa! Sure, yeah, no problem! LOL!
I was looking at your website to figure what you’ve written in the past – so I can buy it -and I saw you had about 20 novels and novellas under a pseudonym. YOu mentioned you won’t divulge. Is this work that you aren’t proud of and care to be associated with? Is it a contract that you can’t say your name?
Awww, thanks Lisa! That’s so sweet! I am proud of most of it. It’s erotica and very personal to me, so I’d feel like I was having sex and posting it on the internet for everyone to see or something. I don’t know. Sharing my sex life isn’t me, unless it’s hidden under a pseudonym, LOL.
We were required to take a pseudonym, though.
OK. Wait. Erin – you must move.
That frickin’ thing must be the result of nuclear experimentation causing mutations in bugs. That thing could have eaten you and you had every right to protect yourself. Elmo? I think not. Elmo is fuzzy and cute and sings. This thing was Fang or KB (Killer Bug). If I had seen it, I would have died on the spot. Or, if my body refused to die, I would have jumped off a cliff so I never had to remember the sight of this thing running around my bathroom.
Sheesh.
Robin, this is Arizona! There’s tons of military stuff around here, so maybe that’s the problem. I like Killer Bug! Yes!
It is totally haunting me! I keep seeing it when I close my eyes! I can hear its feet running on the floor!
I hate to kill bugs too. I always feel so guilty. However, it is kind of funny that the bug had a name. I had Emory read this because I was laughing towards the end. I feel like this is something that would happen to me.
Chin up! At least you don’t have to dodge bugs in the wee morning.
I couldn’t believe it, Christina! Who would give a bug a name?!
I haven’t seen a bug since. Yay!
thunk at first twas a cockroach, but final pic, not sure any more…
no matter how much i like critters, once they bite, game over for them…
Laughingwolf, I’m not sure. I think it was a cockroach, just a HUGE one!
I agree!
And with that, I pass the torch.
LOL, Melanie! I coulda lived with that torch.
Reminds me of our roaches here in LA. You can IMAGINE how I responded to seeing my 1st one strolling across the living room floor!
Sorry for my recent absence, btw. Nothing but problems with my brand new, WinBLOWS 7 computer.
Yikes, Lana! Oh man, I CAN imagine! Definitely!
Reminds me of the joke, “Men are only good one for one thing. Killing bugs.” My list of kills include a black widow spider and a rat I called Elmer. I did not have time to name the black widow as it was inches away from my one-year old son.
That’s a joke? I thought it was a job description! A black widow spider?! Yikes!
I never kill bugs. I hate bugs, they make my skin crawl. I can’t bring myself to get near enough to do any damage, but I have directed the can of hair spray in their direction when they are bent on attack.
A bug that big…I might have had to move.
eeewwwwww………
I know what you mean, Aimless! I can’t go near enough, either, LOL.
Oh oops. I think I told you it may have been a palo verde beetle without seeing your photo. That is a cockroach… they’re not all that uncommon outside at night. The first time I saw one in dim light I thought it was a lizard… boy was I disappointed.
While the cockroaches are creepy and FAST, the palo verde beetles put these cockroaches to shame in the size department. The good thing is that the larvae only feed on palo verde tree roots, so if you don’t have palo verde trees, you probably won’t have the beetles. And they beetles only appear for a few weeks in June or July.
(Of course, palo verde trees are everywhere down here.)
Did I mention they have a fondness for swimming pools? Oh, but they can’t swim. I’ve rescued many who were attempting the backstroke, put them on dry land, only to have them jump right back in. I guess maybe they’re suicidal. Maybe life above ground is worse than below.
*cries* The bugs get BIGGER?! That’s a nightmare! Luckily, there’s no Palo Verde trees (I don’t think) in the RV resort, and we have an indoor swimming pool. If I see one of those bugs I’m going to die! Well, probably not.
Seriously? Hah! That’s hilarious! Suicidal bugs. You are way too nice, Shawn. I’m not sure I’d want them living. ‘Course, I don’t want to swim with their dead bodies, either!