More Florida "Fun"

I was playing with Meili on her bedroom floor the other day when I heard a large 'thud.' I looked toward the direction of the sound to find this delightful creature. The picture does not do it justice. The thing was no less than 4 inches long! I wish I would have thought to put a ruler next to him before I snapped the photo but I'm actually surprised that I had the presence of mind to grab the camera. This is the kind of thing I would expect to see in a science museum, not in my daughter's bedroom! I trapped it under a toy bin while I tried to figure out how I was going to get rid of it. My usual 'smacking it with a flip-flop' method was not going to work in this case. I ended up taking it to the park across the street and hacking it in half with a shovel. When I left him, the two halves were still walking independently of one another. The bug guy came the next day and I showed him this picture on my camera. He called it a Stinking Cockroach and said that it is really rare to see one at all, let alone in a house. I really hope I heard him correctly and this stinking cockroach is not actually a stinGing cockroach!

Two days later, I was sewing in my living room and heard another 'thud.' When I looked, I found another uninvited guest.

I might actually think this guy was cute IF I SAW HIM OUTSIDE. The next 45 minutes pretty much sucked. My first reaction was to grab the camera and capture the novelty of the occasion. Then, I started to get concerned that he would hop somewhere that I couldn't catch him and then I'd lose track of him only to be surprised by him when he landed on my face in the middle of the night. I thought I could catch him in the same bin I used to catch the amazon cockroach until I observed that he could jump about 12 feet at a time and became completely grossed out. My next inclination was to go and close my bedroom door so that if the frog remained loose in the house I could at least breathe easy in my own bedroom. In trying to do that, I only succeeded to chase him INTO MY BEDROOM. At about that time my mom called and was entertained by my hunting prowess. I got off the phone with her and went for the pool skimmer. FYI, it is not easy to maneuver a 10 foot pole in a 12 x 12 bedroom filled with furniture. Exasperated, I called Matt at work and begged him to beam himself home and catch the damn frog.

I kept him on the phone while he drove and I had a staring contest with the frog who seemed to get a kick out of making me scream each time it hopped to a new vantage point in my bedroom. At one point, he tried to hop up a wall and fell to the floor. I had a straight shot and got him with the pool net. Thankfully, he hopped himself into a tangled mess in it and I could get him outside. What an ordeal! I hate wildlife!