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hellobuddy
Feb 22, 2006, 09:46 PM
My dorm room, as of late has been a bit crowded with some six legged visitors. I did not manage to snag a picture, but after thoroughly searching the internet, I am still in the dark as to the name of our new friends. They are about 2.5 cm long. It looks as if they have some sort of wing structure, but do not fly. A somewhat flat narrow body and very long segmented antennae. The most interesting aspect of these creatures are the markings on the back. They have what vaguely resembles eyes on there tail region. They also have a yellow uneven stripe going down their back and yellow blobs all over their back. The rest of the bug is an amber-brown.

My first thought was that they were cockroaches. But I really hope that that is not the case as it would be very embarrassing. It did not look like any of the most common kind of cockroach that I found on the internet. I don't know if this will help, but I usually find them on my clothes. It's quite shocking to put on a hat or sweater to discover that several "buddies" are sharing your clothes with you.

Please help as I have become very paranoid and act like a little girl around these undoubtedly harmless but rather creepy fellows...

Thank you!

RickJ
Feb 23, 2006, 04:08 AM
I am 95% sure they're not cockroaches.

What city are you in - and were you able to catch how many legs they had?

hellobuddy
Feb 23, 2006, 08:34 AM
Thank you so much for helping!

I am almost 95% sure that they have six legs. And I'm in the Chicago area...

RickJ
Feb 23, 2006, 09:03 AM
I did some hunting based on your descriptions, and am coming up empty for a spider.

I'm thinking that if it's not a spider, it's in the beetle family (order Coleoptera).

If no one comes along with an ID, please post a picture of the unwanted roommates.

And fyi, www.bugs.net is my favorite critter identification site... but I just couldn't find a match for what you've got.

hellobuddy
Feb 23, 2006, 09:22 AM
Thank you! :)

Correction: not all of the buggers have a "blob" of yellow on their back, they have a lot of different yellow blobs... I can't seem to get a good picture, my camera won't zoom in that much... and they may be coming from the firewood that my real roommate decided to store in our room... I thought that firewood was treated so that it wouldn't get bugs, though... I could be wrong

I dug some more using the info you gave me... is it possible that it could be a sawyer beetle? It looks extremely similar to the pictures I found of them online

RickJ
Feb 24, 2006, 03:28 AM
It certaily could be. There are many different appearances of them, so glance through the bunch of pics here (http://images.google.com/images?q=sawyer+beetle&svnum=100&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&sa=N&tab=wi)and here (http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&p=sawyer+beetle)... do any of those look just like yours?