Cockroach Crawls on Reporter on Live TV—and Her Reaction Is Shocking

Cockroach Crawls on Reporter on Live TV—and Her Reaction Is Shocking

The show must go on—no ifs, ands or bugs about it.

That's the lesson KTLA reporter Rachel Menitoff took to heart when her live broadcast was crashed by a cockroach, which crawled around on her chest and neck as she discussed the recent heatwave in Los Angeles.

As seen in a July 14 broadcast, Menitoff was speaking to the camera while standing on a sidewalk when the roach popped into frame on the lower half of her navy blue jumpsuit.

The insect then made its way to the reporter's bare décolletage before briefly getting tangled in her hair.

While many would've been bugging out, Menitoff kept her composure. As she continued to discuss the lingering hot temperature, the cockroach leaped onto her microphone before flying away into the night.

“I knew it was on me," the journalist explained to the outlet after the incident. “But I knew if I took notice of it, I wouldn’t be able to continue on with the report. So I said to myself, 'Just get through this moment and then kind of shake it off.'”

"She has amazing mental strength to totally ignore something like that as if it wasn't even happening; she didn't even flinch a muscle," one commented on YouTube, while another quipped, "I would've screamed bloody murder. She deserves a raise for this."

Even Menitoff's KTLA colleagues were impressed by her calm demeanor. 

"That’s our Rachel Menitoff, who is so professional,” anchor Megan Henderson raved during the July 15 broadcast. “She kept her cool. There’s no way I would have been able to keep going.”

Meteorologist Kirk Hawkins jokingly added, “That’s terrifying. Now we’re all going to have nightmares about flying cockroaches.”