I am sitting at my desk working, and pause to look up at the lovely view of my backyard though the expansive wall of windows. This light-filled Great Room is so spacious that it has the feel of a loft or dance studio. It’s the reason I bought this particular California house. I sigh happily; having spent most of my life on the East Coast, it’s so nice to see green in February! I see my palm trees, pretty pool, budding stone fruit trees, and lemons waiting to be picked. My flowers are beginning to bloom!
But wait…what’s that on my pretty wood floor, not 10 feet away on a spot nowhere near rugs, sliding doors, windows or furniture? WTF? It’s a giant cockroach! On his BACK wriggling his disgusting little spiny legs! I hurriedly take a wad of paper towel and smash him, over and over again, until I’m convinced he’s dead. I feel and hear the crunch under my fingers. I walk right outside and dump the paper towel with the cockroach into my garbage. No recycling for him. I want him gone forever.
Why was he there in broad daylight? How did he end up on his back? There aren’t any ceiling vents, open windows, or cracks in nearby doors. Are his friends lurking? Is it some sign from the gods? “Go back East, get out of California NOW!”
OK, I have taken pride throughout my life in not being the faint-of-heart type. As a child I had an assortment of reptiles and amphibians as pets, including a gorgeous corn snake to which I fed live mice. I even became very interested in entomology (the study of insects) as a pre-adolescent. For a while I had a thriving business selling my pinned bees to 5th grade boys, who stuck them onto the end of their pencil erasers, in hopes, probably, of making some girl squeal in alarm. But obviously, not me. Over the years I’ve snap-trapped invading mice in basements without flinching, calmly faced carpenter ant and termite infestations, and even successfully dealt with a bizarre plague of chipmunks at my cabin one summer. There were so many that they got into every room and cupboard and would wake up my next-door neighbor by frolicking on her bed at 5:30 a.m. The final straw was when one climbed up my back while I was eating breakfast. I’ll spare you the details but let’s just say that I became the envy of the HOA once I did my research and implemented the “Bucket of Death” that I found on Google, which turned out to be surprisingly effective.
But I will admit that my debonair attitude is nowhere to be found when confronted with humongous cockroaches. I’ve encountered them when spending time in the tropics, but never before in my own home. I feel revulsion just thinking about them. So once again I turn to research in a cool-headed attempt to answer my questions as well as explore ways to move forward to restore the sanctity of my home. I turn to the extensive Wikipedia articles on the “Cockroach” and the “American cockroach (Periplaneta americana)”. They are very informative.
It turns out that the American cockroach is not native to the Americas, but probably arrived from Africa as early as the 17th century. It is between 1.1 and 2.1 inches long (Gross!). It can live up to 706 days (Almost 2 years!). I am beginning to feel queasy, but plunge ahead.
The adults can fly, but prefer to run (Thank God for small favors). The reason is clear: In an experiment, a P. americana registered a record speed of 3.4 mph, about 50 body lengths per second, which would be comparable to a human running at 210 mph. Could my disgusting little visitor have simply been an extraordinarily bad flyer? That landed on his back??? Pretty far-fetched if you ask me.
I am skimming now to minimize the time I will have to see the photos accompanying the article: American cockroaches are omnivorous and opportunistic feeders that eat materials such as cheese, sweets, beer, tea, leather, bakery products, starch in book bindings, manuscripts, glue, hair, flakes of dried skin, dead animals, plant materials, soiled clothing, and glossy paper with starch sizing. They are particularly fond of fermenting foods. They have also been observed to feed upon dead or wounded cockroaches of their own or other species.
Although my attempt to quell my nausea is failing, I find myself admiring the writer’s keen attention to detail (Yet can’t help but wonder… glossy paper only?)
Moving right along, I learn that the female produces an average of 150 young in a series of small “purse shaped” egg cases (ootheca– and, no, I don’t know how to pronounce that) which are extruded from her abdomen and deposited somewhere safe. Upon finding an egg case, use a napkin to pick it up and then forcefully crush it; the resulting fluid leakage will then indicate the destruction of the eggs inside. Discard the napkin and the destroyed egg case as garbage. Here this Wiki author, in my opinion, is morphing inappropriately into an advice columnist- but I do appreciate that my instinct to vigorously smush my visitor and not recycle him is articulately reinforced.
Now there’s this little gem: Experiments on decapitated specimens of several species of cockroach found a variety of behavioral functionality remained, including shock avoidance and escape behavior… The severed head is (also) able to survive and wave its antennae for several hours, or longer when refrigerated and given nutrients.
By this point I’m wondering, who are these people who do these experiments, and what are their lives like? Researchers from Heriot-Watt University demonstrated that a power laser can, with high effectiveness, neutralize cockroaches in a home, and suggest it might be an alternative to pesticides. Actually, I don’t think I want to know what their lives are like and this laser thing doesn’t sound like a good option for me.
There is so much more. Everything gets a little blurry due as I read about cockroaches being kept as pets, ground into medicines, or considered juicy culinary delicacies. Under Behavior, I learn that they have individual personalities, and that Cooperation and competition are balanced in cockroach group decision-making behavior. I begin to fear that I will have nightmares of a seething mass of cockroaches assembling in my crawl space for some sort of arthropod town hall. I envision hordes of waving limbs and antenna accompanied by a cacophony of their little hissing, buzzing, and whistling sounds, which builds to a crescendo as they decide that they will settle their vicious differences, and instead band together to vanquish The Other, which is this case will turn out to be me.
That’s it. I’ve had it. I give up trying to find my answers for now. I hate the authors of the Wiki articles and click them closed. So much for research.
As I continue to sit at my desk, I realize I’m overreacting to this whole cockroach thing. But it’s actually not the first vermin incident at my new house. A few months ago I found a very large black widow spider in my garage. I’d been waiting my whole life to encounter that red hourglass (ever since I read the Nancy Drew Mystery which prominently featured the species). The reality of seeing the words “Black Widow Spider” pop up when I used Google Lens to identify it was kind of thrilling. But of course, I DESTROYED IT IMMEDIATELY. Talk about a crunch. And then there are the rats. We didn’t have them in the New England suburbs. But here I feel surrounded. They decimate my vegetables, fruit, and flowers. They poop around my garbage cans, by the pool pump, and under my patio table. They’ve even squashed the grass into a path from the fence to my birdfeeder, where they eat the scattered seed and to my horror actually scamper up the pole to feast in the night. Last spring, a rat died under my bedroom, which smelled for weeks even after a kindly neighbor crawled under to retrieve the carcass.
I know. I need to call an exterminator, set traps, try a baffle, buy new screens for the crawl space, and maybe not have a bird feeder at all. Focusing on the creepy Wikipedia articles is just a distraction.
And suddenly I feel not grossed or weirded out, but just sad. It takes me by surprise. Yes I’ve always wanted the fruit trees and warm winters.…but California, in many ways, is different from what I expected. The situation with my vermin roommates is only a part of it. It’s just hard leaving so many of the people and trappings of my East Coast life behind.Oh, I will forge ahead, one way or another. I always do. I will figure it out. But sometimes, it’s just really really hard.
Sources:
Wikipedia contributors. “American cockroach.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 24 Mar. 2025. Web. 24 Mar. 2025.
Wikipedia contributors. “Cockroach.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 20 Mar. 2025. Web. 24 Mar. 2025.