roach??
dear bugman,
I sent you info, but no picture about these which live outside (and now some inside as of a month or so ago) our southeast michigan home. i now have photos. they are about 3/8 to 1/2 inch long, walk around during the day (and we assume night too). they are very light brown, but don’t have any dark lines like the german roaches. I saw one fly only once, they usually walk or run. What are they and will they try to make a home in our house?? thanks a lot.
LN
Hi LN,
You certainly have a cockroach. I can only guess you home would be attractive to them. You are correct in guessing it does not look like a German Cockroach, but I can’t help you on the species.
European wood cockroach (Ectobius pallidus)
Hey are you from Mars or what?
Never seen a cockroach in your life !
C’mon its such a common insect !
Um, wait!
“The German cockroach is best identified by small size and two parallel lines running from back of head to wings”. http://ento.psu.edu/extension/factsheets/german-cockroaches
There are no stripes on this one’s pronotum!
I looked through bugguide’s section on common house roaches (on the Order Blattodea page), and it looks like none of them. My first thought was that it was a small, harmless forest/garden ectobiid which had wandered into the house, but a quick scan through harmless ectobiids on bugguide didn’t find any obvious matches. Of course, it is entirely possible that the pronotal stripes were blurred out by the poor lighting of the photo, but I would be very very cautious before assuming there is an infestation.
Cheers