The Giant Cockroach – Part 1

Author’s note: This is the first in a two-part series about Jenice H.’s knowledge of and encounters with intelligent insects.

There are more than 4,000 known species of cockroaches on earth today. Jenice H. knows there are more species – giant species. Species science knows nothing about.

Jenice lived in San Antonio, Texas, in 1990 when she struck up a conversation with a man in his mid-20s from New York who walked his dog through her neighborhood.

“He said he had nothing else to do but shoot the breeze, so I barbecued him up a hot dog,” Jenice said. “He asked if I wanted to hear a weird, but true incident that had happened to him around 1985. He said he had quit on the spot, as it had scared the bejesus out of him.”

The young man had just graduated high school and got a job at a restaurant that he soon found had a pest problem.

“He had only intended to (work) there a few years, as there was bad sanitation problem what with the rats and breathing in cockroach (waste),” Jenice said. “He said he wondered why he had been wheezing more about that time for some many weeks.”

Cockroach feces and saliva carry allergens and can trigger asthma, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

One day, the grease trap under the kitchen floor clogged and the owner asked the young man to clean it out. It was early evening and the young man was preparing to clock out.

“His boss had asked him if he could squeeze through a small crawlspace in the kitchen floor,” Jenice said. “The boss said there’s something blocking up the natural draining of the fry grease. Fix it before inspectors reported it.”

So, the young man did what his boss asked and shinnied into the crawl space the city uses to vent the pipes under buildings. The beam from his flashlight cut through the darkness as he pulled himself through the dank, filthy, cramped area under the floor, and he noticed what clogged the drain.

He reached for the object and pulled out something that looked like a plate of an insect’s exoskeleton – but this was two-feet long.

“He then heard some kind of screeching, and thought perhaps it was a rat,” Jenice said.

The sound came from a semi-circular ventilation shaft leading away from the crawlspace. As he moved his arm to toss the object he’d found into the shaft something in that shaft moved.

“He almost didn’t piece it together until he saw two long feelers about a yard long swish around on the other side of the groove,” Jenice said. “It was a giant cockroach. By the dimension of the feelers, maybe six-feet long.”

The young man dropped what he was now certain was exoskeleton and pushed himself out of the crawlspace and back into the restaurant kitchen. He resigned immediately and never went back.

“Roaches are purported to be an intelligent insect,” Jenice said. “The roach was smart enough to clog up the grease to harden it and eat in the dark hours when the restaurant closed. Borders on the bizarre.”

Next week: Jenice encounters the giant cockroaches in California.

Copyright 2010 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal in Your Backyard,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.