Help me identify this bug

[rockymountaindem]

Hello all,

You may recall (you probably don't) that I had a bit of a roach problem in my apartment because the idiots living below me apparently had an infestation that was sending a few scouts up the sink pipe space into my kitchen. In fact, the exterminator that management sent out to my place told me that he had been called to the two apartments directly below me earlier in the year, but said he knew the roaches would be back because the people in those two units were so incredibly sloppy and unclean.

Fast forward to now. Thankfully, I am out of that crappy building and into a very nice new place. This is a condo, so this time I don't have management to call in the heavy guns for free, and I'd like to avoid incurring any unnecessary costs.

I've lived here for about two weeks and as usual am keeping very clean. I can't vouch for the person who lived here before me. However, over the past 4 days I have seen a total of five bugs in my kitchen, all of which look the same but are of varying sizes. They are:

-Brown
-Have long antennae which protrude straight forward from their heads, and are slightly longer than their whole bodies
-Ranged in size from the length of a thumbtack to about 5/8ths an inch
-Much longer than they are wide
-Hide from the light

Now, these are certainly not the German cockroaches I had before. They are much smaller. Also, the antennae go straight forward instead of up over their heads. Being much smaller, they are also not grossing me out as much. However, I want them gone, of course. I fear that perhaps they are juvenile roaches which have not matured yet, but again they don't look like the bastards I had to deal with previously. I know I'm not giving anybody much to go on, but if anybody in the Boston area (or from anywhere) has had problems with similar bugs, please give me your hypotheses.

[EFerrari]

1. Hard to say. Was he wearing a wedding ring?

[Heidi]

2. Please check here:

www.whatsthatbug.com

[Critters2]

3. I agree that they sound like young cockroaches.

It's possible they were in boxes you brought with you.

The color, the length, and the fact that they hide from the light all scream cockroach to me. It's time to get to know your local Orkin (or Terminix or whatever) person, imo.

[rockymountaindem]

5. Well, I looked at Heidi's link

at the pic of an immature German cockroach (what I had last time) and that definitely is not the case this time. That's a huge relief. Those guys are much more round than the bugs I've seen here, so I think maybe we can rule them out.

[Gormy Cuss]

4. Check the silverfish at Heidi's link

Silverfish like moist areas and have very long antennae and scurry away from light. They're also fairly common in much of the country including Boston. They have bodies that are wider at the head and taper off at the tail end, although in really little ones it's hard to notice that.

If that's what you have, ask for silverfish paks at CVS or a hardware store.