Eeeeewwwww

[SteveB]

I spent about fifteen years as a disaster volunteer with the Red Cross. Most of the events were fires here in Boston in some of the less affluent areas. In entering some of these burnt out buildings within minutes after the fire was extinguished, I would see what looked like a charred wall moving - however it was merely thousands of cockroaches that were parading over the still very hot surface. They were still milling about three hours later when everything was down to the 5 degrees outside temperature of February. They will survive almost anything.

[Bugbear]

Aye, pounds of boric acid and a little powdered sugar...

[LANCER1562]

Anything that can survive ground zero at Nagasaki and Hiroshima or inside of a microwave oven on high for 8 minutes scares me.

[Bugbear]

If I remember correctly, the german cockroach gives live birth rather than laying eggs. Nothing like finding cockroach seeds all over the place, though...

Alright, alright! I've broken my own rules enough. I'll stay out of the cockroach thread; though I fit in so well...

[LANCER1562]

Hey Alan,
It could have been worse. It could have been a Madagascar hissing cockroach. Talk about huge!

[PatJ]

This has nothing to do with kilts, but...

I spent nearly 18 months in Southeast Asia - Thailand - and one night while drinking a beer in one of the local establishments, a cockroach - about three inches across and five inches long ran across my sandled foot. If I had not been about 2/3rds drunk, it would have scared the "manure" out of me. As it was, I found out that the "Cowpot" fried rice, often included anything running across the grill - including cockroaches. Oh, the memories that this thread has brought back to me from the early 1970's.

But, Sarongs were commonly worn by Thai men out in public or even to work on construction sites. I know their not kilts....

PatJ

[CDNSushi]

inside of a microwave oven on high for 8 minutes scares me.

Is that from personal experience?

[The F-H.C.A.G.]

I've seen it. I distinctly remember microwaving cocroaches for at least 5 minutes with no obvious effects. Ahh, Santa Cruz!

Be well,

[CDNSushi]

Man. And I thought WE were bad when we were kids -- plucking wings off flies, magnifying glassing ants and exploding mosquitoes.

[JamieKerr]

Growing up in Canada, I never saw a real, live cockroach until my first trip to Mexico. Now that we live in Japan, they are very common (and BIG too).

Where I go camping in Ontario I find roaches just about everywhere I set up camp. BLECH.

Anyway.

Here's a good one from just a couple days ago! I went out to dinner with a colleague from work the other night, and we decided to eat at Friendly's restaurant. I ordered a sort of steak stir fry served over rice. I took a few bites of it and decided it tasted very strongly of fish. I asked my dinner companion to taste it and tell me if she thought it tasted odd, and she agreed that it did. I'd never sent food back in my life, but quickly decided I could not stomach this odd tasting food. I continued picking around at my food until the server returned so that I could complain. As I did so I found an inch long piece of paper in my food. It turned out to be part of the paper wrapper that had surrounded the steak. Written on the piece of paper was the "use by" date, which was out dated! Blech!