In Praise Of La Cucaracha

Gather 'round, all you who make your living largely or smally, for that matter from the fine art of executing cockroaches. The editor recently trekked to the library for the express purpose of unearthing some Ripley's Believe It Or Not-style "strange-but-true" facts about those magnificent, indomitable six-leggers that "pays your rent and butters your bread." For example:

I. Did you know that:

• Cockroaches have been known to eat book bindings, magazines, paper-covered boxes, and the like?
• That ain't all: They also eat cereals, sweetened or sugary substances, meat products, cheese, beer, leather, hair, wallpaper, artwork, legal documents, postage stamps, draperies, paper currency, and dead and rotting organic matter?
• Cockroaches have been implicated — though not convicted — in the spread of the following diseases: tuberculosis, cholera, leprosy, dysentery, and typhoid?
• Cockroaches do not bite?
• Cockroaches have inhabited the earth for take your pick anywhere between 250 million and 400 million years?
• The earliest fossilized cockroaches so closely resemble contemporary species that one can almost imagine them freshly crushed by an irate homemaker? (Of course, when the earliest fossilized cockroaches roamed the earth, the first homemaker was still more than again, take your pick — anywhere between 249 million and 399 million years in the future.)
• There is an artistic medium known as "Roachart," created by an artist, Richard Boscarino, who poses dead cockroaches in lifelike backdrops equipped with tiny props to suggest, among other settings, a beauty parlor, a sales counter at Bloomingdale's, a public restroom, a bowling alley, a diner, and a re-enacted Last Supper?
• In a 1988 study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, a patient showed up at a doctor's office with two cockroaches lodged inside his head one in each ear? And the opportunistic physician used the patient to compare two different extrication procedures lidocaine and mineral oil?
• Other methods of extricating cockroaches lodged in ears include shining a light into the orifice in order to lure out positively phototactic species, and using suction devices to extricate them manually?
• There are more than 4,000 known species of cockroaches?

II. Were you aware that:

• Cockroaches live throughout the world, but most of them live in the tropics?
• Cockroaches that inhabit human structures are omnivorous — meaning that they'll eat just about any old thing? On the other hand, most cockroaches i.e. those that do not typically invade buildings are not omnivorous, and feed on algae, fungi, or fruit?
• For more than 60 years, "Archie," a cockroach with the soul of a poet, occupied a lasting place in the affections of the reading public? (The first poem by "Archie" appeared in the New York Sun in 1916, in the column of his creator, Don Marquis. Each night after the Sun's last edition had gone to press, the cockroach bard crawled out and expressed himself on Marquis' typewriter by hurling his body against the keys, one at a time. His inability to manage capital letters or do much about punctuation marks rendered his singular lower-case style unmistakable.)
• In the Madagascar cockroach, air released forcibly through the spiracles produces an audible hissing sound?
• The fastest recorded speed measured for the American cockroach is 2.9 miles per hour, or 130 centimeters per second? (In the absolute sense, this is a much slower speed than many vertebrates are able to attain. In relation to body size, however, it is remarkably fast. If speed were increased proportionally, an American cockroach the size of a lion could run about 70 miles per hour.)
• It's a damn good thing there are no cockroaches the size of lions?

• The American cockroach has a phallic nerve stimulating hormone; this hormone can be extracted from the corpora cardiaca, and when injected into male cockroaches it causes the abdominal movements characteristic of copulation?
• Although there is little conclusive evidence that points to cockroaches as disseminators of pathogenic organisms, the circumstantial evidence is strong, and it has been suggested that cockroaches may in fact rival house flies in their capacity for disease transmission?
• Cockroach debris, including excrement and body parts, is a major allergen in house dust?
• At least 75% of asthmatic children display sensitivity to cockroach parts?
• Due to the frequency with which cockroach parts contaminate food, some food allergies--notably chocolate--may actually be manifestations of cockroach allergies?
• The German cockroach is not really German (in fact the Germans call it the Prussian cockroach), but is thought to have originated in equatorial Africa?
• In a 1970 lawsuit, Stuckey's Carriage Inn vs. Philipps, a hotel owner was sued by a hotel guest who, while attempting to get rid of a cockroach that had crawled up her thigh, got her legs entangled in a bedspread and stumbled and fell over a chair?
• Most cockroaches are unlike the majority of insects in that their exoskeleton is coated not with a waxy layer but a greasy one; among other things, this characteristic enables cockroaches to slide into narrow cracks and crevices where human feet cannot smash them?

4. Were you even remotely cognizant that:

• Cockroaches' association with filth means they can physically contaminate food with bacteria, and they have been associated with the transmission of salmonella and other foodborne illnesses?
• The Romans called the cockroach lucifuga and blatta for its habit of fleeing from the light?
• The American, Australian and smoky brown cockroaches are believed to have reached America by slave ships from Africa? And the oriental and German cockroaches are thought to have immigrated from Europe, which represented a "way station" on the long trek of these originally Asian or northeastern African species?
• The Madagascar hissing cockroach has become a popular pet in some parts of the United States?
• There have been reports in the United States of German cockroaches feeding on the eyebrows and eyelashes of children and adults in heavily infested apartments?
• Cockroaches are known assassins of the odious roommate, the bedbug?
• European fishermen use the oriental cockroach as bait for bream, a bluegill fish?
• European nationals name their cockroaches after their neighbors across the border, an honor which is always reciprocated?
• In some parts of the world, roaches are profitably reared for chicken feed?
• In Japan cockroaches are known as abula mushi, and in China chang-lang?