Seeing the shield-like plate (the pronotum) covering the insect's thorax and back of the head, you might recognize this as a cockroach. It's BLABERUS CRANIIFER, a species native to Mexico, the West Indies and Central America, and introduced into Florida. The one in the picture was found at dusk scurrying along the dry, shadowy bottom of a concrete gutter beside the town square in Valladolid, about half an hour east of here, where I'd gone to pick up new glasses. You can see him in his gutter, displaying the red markings on his pronotum suggesting "Death's Head," below:

The "True" part of the name comes from there being a similar species known as the False Death's Head.

I hadn't expected to find much information about the True Death's Head Cockroach, but it turns out that there's a lot. That's because this is a favorite species for animal collectors, since it's a handsome insect, can't climb glass terrarium walls, has well developed wings but can't fly, doesn't stink unless provoked and then only a little, and is extremely easy to maintain, eating just about anything.

Apparently large numbers of cockroaches under the Death's Head name are sold in US pet stores, as tarantula food. However, I read that most of those are actually a hybrid between Blaberus cranifer and another species. In captivity they live about a year.

from the October 3,  2010 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
VISITOR INSIDE THE MOSQUITO NET
Tuesday night, not long after dozing off a couple of hours after sundown, I was awakened inside the mosquito net by puffs of air, now on my cheek, now my arm, now my foot. One summer night back when I was hermitting in the south-Mississippi woods I'd awakened to the same thing, and that had turned out to be a bat inside my net. In fact, once I got my little penlight shining I found a brownish, oval lump the size of an egg clinging to the inside of the mosquito net's walls. I got my camera, took a picture, removed the critter, and went back to sleep, wondering how bats get inside my mosquito net.

The next day, what a surprise to see the picture once it was on my laptop's screen. That's it below:

Not a bat. With spiny legs like that and such long, slender antennae above, it had to be an insect. And with a rounded "hood" -- the pronotum -- covering its head like that, it had to be a cockroach.

But where were its wings, and why was the lower half of its body segmented not at all like a cockroach's, and what was all that white stuff covering its body?

It took me awhile to figure out that it lacked wings and the lower half of its body, or abdomen, was segmented because this is an immature stage on which the wings haven't yet developed, and all cockroach abdomens are segmented, just that on adults the wings cover the abdomen so you can't see the segments.

Also I figure the body is white and flaky because this immature, late-instar stage is about to molt, so the old exterior skeleton, or exoskeleton, is pulling away from the new exoskeleton forming below it -- which when the old one is shed will expand and show bright colors. Where air enters between the old and new exoskeletons, a pale interstice forms.

I'm guessing that this is the True Death's Head Cockroach, BLABERUS CRANIIFER.

But, This wingless immature cockroach can't fly, so what about the puffs of air that had awakened me? I'm guessing that the puffs were indeed caused by a bat, just one outside the tent instead of inside, maybe trying to get at the cockroach the bat's sonar detected on the net.

Just as when that bat back in Mississippi really did get inside the net, it all seems pretty unusual -- except to my Maya friends. To them it's just the kind of thing those mischievous, gnomelike Aluxob would do, especially since we've not yet gotten around to dedicating the hut properly, with prayers and offerings of atole at the hut's four sides.