WEEK 6-- My Neighborhood

Cockroach Watching

My apartment is home to three humans and an uncountable number of cockroaches. I know the number is over 100 at any given time. In my apartment I’ve spotted at least 2 different species of roach—the German cockroach and the Brown-banded. I think the American cockroach lives here too, though because the cockroaches look different in the nymph stage than they do in the adult stage (and I don’t get to look at them very long), they are hard to identify.

The problem with cockroaches is that they are interesting and a little pretty. The German Cockroach is long, thin, and nearly a translucent brown, a cappuccino-colored cousin to the preying mantis. The Brown-banded cockroach’s distinctively striped oval body makes it seem to carry a Victorian miniature painting on its back—maybe a desertscape or a close up of a zebra. And then there is just the magic of their hiding. During a day I might see 2 or 3 cockroaches. But if I step into the kitchen at night and switch on the light 20 or so might be visible at once. I look for them during the day—inside drawers, under cupboards, in the cracks between the oven and the fridge. Sometimes I spook up one or two, but even that is rare.
Perhaps they have invisibility powers during daylight hours.

Dirt according to Mary Douglass is “matter-out-of place.” She must mean that dirt in a garden or a forest is soil, on a hillside its clay, in a bin its compost. Only when you track it across your kitchen tiles or find it under your fingernails do you call it dirt. Pests of course are simply beings out of place. A mouse in a meadow or a bug in the back yard is not a pest. Of the thousands of cockroach species world wide there are only around 10 or so that are considered pests—these are the ones that enjoy human company. Or at least the company of our discarded ,dropped, or unsealed food (food out of place it seems is cockroach dinner).

I can only indulge in the natural history of the cockroach momentarily until the shoe, the newspaper, or even my bare hand squashes one more out of existence. In my apartment the population density requires extermination to win out over fascination.