• Adult Size: Male: 45 mm. Female: 47 mm.
  
• Climbing Abilities: All life stages can climb.
• Flying Abilities: Cannot fly.
• Mode of Birth: Oviparous.
• Care Level: Easy.
• Temperature Requirements: 70-85 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Air Humidity: Dry.
  
• Substrate Humidity: Moist.
  
• Favorite Foods: Not picky.
• Locality: Banana Bay Resort and Marina. Marathon, Florida.

It was getting close to midnight, and my headlamp was refusing to cooperate. I stumbled out from behind the restrooms where I was aimlessly sifting through leaves and wood in search of bugs, still shaken from a close encounter with a coral snake. I had not seen my fellow teammates for at least an hour, and, after coming up fairly empty-handed, I concluded that our choice of lodging may not have been the best despite our prime location in the Florida Keys. I saw headlamps up the road and decided to regroup and hopefully hear about my friends’ finds; I was in for a surprise. Alan (South Korean bug hunter extraordinaire) and Satchell (ghetto centipede wrangling master) both greeted me with brimming smiles, which threw me off guard. Excitedly, Alan grabbed a ziplock bag from his pack and revealed to me something I had not even considered finding: inside were large, shiny black roaches, some with teeny tiny wings. “Eurycotis”… I stuttered as the gears began to turn in my head. Immediately, Alan exclaimed “lixa”! By this point I lost it, flinging my bag full of collecting gear (and my poor camera) to the ground as I held the bag up to the light to examine the contents. Using his bug-catching magic, Alan had found a small colony of them living amongst palmetto litter on the property, and with a dozen individuals and several hours until the sun came up ahead of us, we decided it was time to find more. We rendezvoused with our arachnid expert Chuck before agreeing on a small patch of forest to investigate. Thinking ahead, Satchell shined his black light flashlight in front of us, revealing many Centruroides scorpions prowling for food. It was an interesting endeavor avoiding, catching, and checking for scorpions with each step, all the while keeping our eyes peeled for shiny black flickers in the headlamp lights. At some point, Alan and I crossed the point of no return and entered ever deeper into the thicket. We had collected thirty or so individuals, but we had not yet seen an adult female. “I give up, I’m going to die in here!” I exclaimed, smacking a large palm frond out of my face. As it swung out of the way, my eyes bolted towards a large black figure sitting on the frond beneath it; at last, we had found an adult female! By now, everyone was exhausted, and we retired for the night, ziplock bags, deli cups, and vials full of our dream invertebrate species. By morning, there wasn’t a trace of Eurycotis to be found anywhere in the forest, and it is entirely possible that had we not explored it at night, we would never have found them. As we prepared our gear for another adventure elsewhere in the Keys that day, we wondered as to what the common name for the species should be. Both fortunately and unfortunately, a quick search on the Cockroach Species File provided the answer: the hustler roach. For the remainder of the day, this was the basis for much of our amusement. I’m sure the roaches don’t take much offense to their moniker, though.