BIG YELLOW COCKROACH

By: Mick Blankenship

What is it about roaches? They don’t bite or sting. They don’t pinch or make you itch. Yet they are among the most feared insects. Is it their sudden, jerky movements? Is it how they can hide in silent, dark, personal spaces and suddenly appear? Or is it a learned behavior because when you were young, you witnessed your mother screaming at the sight of one? I personally think it has something to do with the way they look. Either way, they are pretty close to harmless yet we don’t want to have anything to do with them. We may not like them, but we should respect them. A cockroach can hold its breath for 40 minutes. They can go days without water, a month without food, and can eat just about anything to survive. They can even live for a few weeks without their head. Yes, that’s right. THEY CAN LIVE WITHOUT THEIR HEAD! Regardless of how nasty you think they are, living without your head deserves some respect. They have been on this earth for at least 300 million years. But despite their strong survival skills, we humans have found a way to kill them instantly. I’m not talking about with the bottom of your shoe. I’m talking about killing them instantly without contact, with roach spray.

I try to use insecticides as little as possible. I have a koi pond and insecticides are poisonous to fish. Years ago, I had a terrible flea infestation in my yard. With our dogs bringing the fleas into our house, something had to be done. I used an insecticide but kept it away from the koi pond. About a week later, there was a big rain. As usual after a big rain, toads filled my pond to fornicate and make tadpoles. The toads left my pond after a few days, but my prized, large koi were floating upside down. I couldn’t figure out what killed them. I was so careful not to use any insecticide around the pond, and the fish had been fine for a week after I used the insecticide. After a little research, I deduced that the toads picked up the insecticide in the yard on their way to the pond. The insecticide does not affect toads. When the toads jumped into my pond, the poison disbursed into the water and poisoned my fish.

I also don’t like to use insecticides because they disrupt the eco-system in your yard. I am into organic gardening and have found that letting an eco-system develop can really help the production in your garden and reduce pest issues. And of course, a third reason not to use pesticides is that they are potentially harmful to humans. But when it comes to roaches, there is just no way around it unless you are going to accept co-habitation. Roaches are too plentiful to avoid and I don’t know of any natural remedies that work well enough to eliminate the creepy crawlers. So I do keep a can of roach spray, which along with wasp spray, are the only two insecticides kept in my home.

Roach spray is pretty amazing stuff. The roaches die immediately. Insecticides have been around since ancient times. The early forms were derived from salt, sulfur, and plants. Inhaling too much of the pyrethrum daisy’s scent can cause asthmatic breathing, sneezing, and headaches. Many of the insecticides used today are synthetic versions of the compound found in this daisy, pyrethrin. Anyone who has heard Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi , or The Counting Crows remake, is familiar with DDT. DDT was the first synthetic pesticide. Though first synthesized in the 1820s, its pesticidal properties were not discovered until around 1940. Now the market is flooded with various synthetic pesticides.

One day I found myself wondering how roach spray works and decided to do a little research. How does spraying the outside of their body make them die immediately? This is what I found out. The body of a roach is encapsulated by its exoskeleton which has holes for breathing. So instead of a nose and nostrils, they breathe all over their body. It is through these holes that roach spray is immediately absorbed. Just spraying the outside of their bodies is the equivalent of spraying something directly up your nose as you are inhaling.

Once insecticides are inhaled by the cockroach, the chemical interrupts the neurological path from the roach’s brain to the rest of its body. Messages can no longer successfully travel the path and the roach can no longer control its body. The roach is paralyzed. So the roach spray doesn’t actually kill the roach. It paralyzes it to later die by starvation. So if you use roach spray, but are still able to muster up some compassion for the most feared, harmless bug on the planet, go ahead and stomp on him. Otherwise you are leaving him to suffer and die by starvation. Believe it or not, it is the compassionate thing to do.