telophase | Help identifying icky thing!

Last night, as I was getting ready for bed, I tossed the clothes I'd washed off the bed and back into the laundry basket (my habit is to upend the laundry basket on the bed, so that I have to put them away before I can go to bed. Naturally, what usually happens is that I put them back into the laundry basket before I go to bed).

I spotted what looked like a coffee bean on the sheet. Picking it up, it felt plastic and examining it, I thought it was a small plastic capsule with a row of metal (copper) teeth on one side. I checked my earphones to see if they were missing anything that looked like it, and found nothing.

So I took it in to Toby. He got his Swiss army knife and looked at it with the magnifying glass and said it looked organic to him. Ick! And when he accidentally cracked it, it had a clear water-like fluid inside. Double ick!

And then I grabbed my camera and took pictures so I could blow them up. Triple ick! And Toby dissected it a little ... quadruple ick!

Of course, we stripped the sheets off the bed and changed them (they had to be changed anyway) and I examined my clothes suspiciously this morning, finding nothing. Our best guess is that whatever it was got picked up from the garage on the laundry basket when I set it down and fell on the bed when I upended it.

Anyway, here's the photos. Anyone have any clue about it?

badnoodles? Bueller?

Well, maybe more icky to us than you, since it was IN OUR BED, BUT STILL.

You can see the scale of it here, more or less.

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When maggots or larvae of other insect species reach their teenage moments between their carefree meat devouring days as maggots and their future life as horrible buzzing fruit devouring monster with wings, they encase themselves in a protective cacoon much like that. Inside the cocoon the maggots basically liquify and rearrange themselves into the adult body plan. So I'd imagine you just murdered an insect teenager. can't specify more accurately what kind of insect though, sorry.

On LJ it's been IDed as a cockroach egg case *shudder*.

The exterminator has been called.

YOU KILLEDED A BABBY! Cockroach pro-lifers will surely picket your skirting boards now. Any idea what species of cockroach it is?

I believe we killded MANNY MANNY BABBIES! The cockroach pro-lifers can picket all they want, as we will shortly be spraying the skirting boards with POISON!!!!

I think the basic common cockroach? The larger one with a darker carapace that we've seen members of here? There's two species normally seen around here - the big, dark one and the smaller, lighter-colored one, but if I go look their names up I'm going to ick myself out again because IN OUR BED.

That's my ID as well.

---L.

Looks like a cockroach egg case.

Ugh. May be time to call the exterminator.

It's one of these (note, do not click this link if you dislike insects or if you ever want to sleep in that bed again):

http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1C1_____enUS390&biw=1280&bih=909&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=american+cockroach+egg+capsule&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= (http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1C1_____enUS390&biw=1280&bih=909&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=american+cockroach+egg+capsule&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

We just put a request in with the property management company for an exterminator.

And I have the Roomba going in the bedroom.

def a roach egg. (agrarian background)

and if you find one, it usually means there are many more, somewhere XD;

Exterminator requested, Roomba going! XD

I'm quite aware of that. Unfortunately.

The general idea of bugs in the house doesn't creep me out, because I Survived an Army Ant Infestation when I lived in Africa, but I'll make an exception for these guys.

agreed. Ants are not as gross as roaches. XD

Yup. It's an American cockroach (Periplaneta americana)ootheca. They're the 1-1.5" reddish brown cockroaches (also in my icon.)

On the upside, it was freshly laid, so you haven't been sleeping with a cockroach egg-case. On the downside, it does mean that you have adult roaches in and around your house, so the call for the PCO was a good one. Nip cockroaches in the bud before they can breed heavily.

Those are the roaches we've been starting to see* in the house - I guess either the weather is driving them inside in the search for water, and/or the last application of poison stuff has faded.

We're sweeping and vacuuming the kitchen shortly, because it makes us want to CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN.

* Surprisingly enough, in the room we spread the diatomaceous earth ... dead. But live elsewhere.

Gaah! I've never seen one of those things before -- luckily -- but I don't think I'll ever forget what they look like now. :P

I am not usually squeamish about insects, since I often mash squash bugs and other garden pests with my bare hands (don't mess with MY zucchini, evil squash bugs!) but I make an exception for cockroaches. A BIG exception. *shudder*

I am going to be jumping away from the coffee beans Toby tends to spill on the floor now!

Yeah, the general consensus has correctly identified it.

What's your exterminator going to use? Because there are some on my front porch I'm planning to destroy on Thursday. (I'd like to meet whoever built my current residence. The asshole built a brick/cinderblock house and didn't bother levelling out the crevices where the bricks/blocks were mortared together. Just put in enough mortar to hold them, not enough to make it level. Apparently, roaches think the depressions between the blocks are a good place to lay eggs.)

I was planning to use a hammer and chisel. Crush them and scrape away the remains.

* Surprisingly enough, in the room we spread the diatomaceous earth ... dead. But live elsewhere.

Huh, apparently the stuff's more effective than I've heard, if it's killing them before they even get out of the room.

Guess I need to go pick up a bag.

I haven't the slightest idea, as we sent in a maintenance request to the property management company, so we're going to use whoever they use. :) (Well, if they call back and tell us pest control is our responsibility we'll start looking at that point. XD)

Make sure it's food-grade and not the stuff for pool filters. We have that, and I discovered *after* we bought it that it's not food-grade, which means it might not be good for, say, pets to get into or for us to breathe. So I haven't put any more down. I'm going to order some food-grade stuff from Amazon to use in the house.

The kitchen had the dead cockroach in it, and a few small dead crickety things, and I think they may be coming in through the crack in the foundation behind the cabinets, which I spread the stuff in front of. So I *think* it's working there.

Thanks for the warning. I'll definitely make sure to get food-grade stuff.

"Food grade" when applied to DE does NOT mean it's safe to breathe! My basic advice: once it's laid down and settled, it's okay (as long as you don't intend to live the rest of your life with a DE floor), but you should probably have some sort of breath mask while applying the stuff.

DE is basically hard, sharp-edged particles so tiny they can get deep deep into your lungs...and then they stay there forever. Don't breathe more of it than you have to.

Good to know, thanks! So far it's in just one spot, underneath the kitchen cabinets next to a couple of holes we think are where bugs are getting in from outside (there's a stale water smell occasionally and the plumber thinks it's a crack in the foundation allowing water to seep in from the flowerbed out there, and the owner of the house has declined to spend the money to fix it).

Help identifying icky thing!

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