what is this?
a picture I took recently of a bug.
What is it?
heidi
Hi Heidi,
It is a Jerusalem Cricket, Potato Bug or Nino de la Tierra, depending on who you are talking to. They are members of the cricket order Othoptera and live underground.
hi, just found a potato bug in my basement. Do you have any idea how it ended up inside the house? Should I take stuff in the basement apart to see if there are others or do they show up by themselves?
Thanks, Jeanette
We live in mountains outside of Sacramento, CA., near Placerville. Yesterday the pesticide man came and sprayed around the house. It’s my daughter’s home and they choose to do this. Today I found a large potato bug with a black striped abdomen struggling and almost paralyzed on patio. Obviously poisoned. It was having a very slow, excruciating death. I’ve seen the same with a praying mantis, also. Sometimes they live 2-3 days and try so hard to move. But they are still very aware of when I come and put my hand near them. They try to defend themselves.
It is a pitiful sight and it breaks my heart. I don’t like to see anything suffer a slow, debilitating death. Finally, after watching the potato bug too long, and the mantis, too, I stepped on them quickly and strongly to take them out of their pain.
The small bugs die more quickly, thank goodness. But I guess the strength of the pesticide isn’t enough to kill the large ones very fast.
My daughter says that they have to have this done because otherwise there are so many earwigs and even scorpions that come in the house. Perhaps…but I think I’d rather deal with them without the poison. It’s heartbreaking.
What else can be done?
I found one of the Potato bugs here in Douglas Wyoming yesterday. We didn’t know what it was until I found your site.
Bug
I grew up in Pocatello Idaho and seen these quite often in the city creek and mink-creek area.They look creepy to me and was scared of them because to me they look like they wasn’t fully developed from a mother’s womb of a species I’ve never seen, having the Partially transparent legs and feet looking kinda like hands and with their big eyes!
(Bug eyes) ? Wondering if they are harmful in anyway?