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Where did you pick your infestation up? Cockroaches, I mean cockroaches!
Don't wish to admit to their existence until you're sure yours is not
the only boat in the area to have encountered the problem?
O.K., I'll break the ice then.
We got our first visitors in Venezuela in June 1993. I
guess, after trudging around shopping in Puerto La Cruz in the sweltering
heat, I just couldn't be bothered to unpack all the boxes of provisions on the
quay, tear all the labels off tin cans, felt tip the contents on the tops of the denuded
receptacles and thus dump the incubating eggs that were in the corrugated paper of those
boxes and lodged behind those labels.
That idleness has, to date, cost two Rentokil
(specialist company) fumigations, hundreds of spray cans of different branded cockroach
killers, hundreds of 'cockroach hotels', box after box of black plastic
'traps', white plastic 'traps', and home made boric-acid-and-sugar
recipes.
Without exception, these products work. The problem is
that, even after a 'purge' and a short-lived two or three weeks' absence of the beastly things, first one, then five,
appear and as a result of their ability to breed exponentially, there is
an explosion in population and soon we are back to square one. We are now in our eighth year of trying to eradicate these
insects.
Before repeating the usual procedure of spending $100 to $150 on a fresh load of
armaments for the battle (sprays, poisons, etc.), I decided to look up in
the encyclopedia just who it is we are sharing our schooner with.
I have learned that our little friends are scientifically classified as Blattodea
Germanica, one of 4000 species of cockroach, only 25 of which species have attained worldwide distribution
and of which only five species are considered a pest to man, including
dear old Blattodea Germanica. The others, in case you wanted to know, are Periplaneta Americana,
Blattelo Orientalis, Blattela Asahinai and Leucophaea Maderae.
Fossils indicate that cockroaches were the predominant insect during the Carboniferous period, three hundred million years
ago. Cockroaches have remained relatively unchanged. They have survived the age of the
dinosaur, ice ages and incredible changes of climate. They are easily the oldest insects alive and, according to Dr Frank Carpenter of the Harvard University Museum of Comparative
Zoology: "Millions of years from now there will be creatures as roach-like as anything
today. Other than destroying the planet, probably nothing we can do will have much effect on the
cockroach."
Dr Fred A. Lawson of the University of Wyoming recalls staying in a Texas
hotel: "I had a visitor, in the form of a Periplaneta Americana
and, with a rolled up newspaper, with a lucky backhand decapitated the
intruder. But the cockroach's fail-safe nervous circuitry converted my satisfying swat into a lesson in
humility. That night, the headless insect crawled out of the waste paper basket and into my open suitcase to deposit it's egg
case. By morning, I was adoptive father to a dozen wraith like cockroach
nymphs.'
The American cockroach, known to generations of mariners as 'Bombay
Canaries' have stowed away on slave ships, camel caravans, airplanes and submarines and are now spread over five continents.
They have moved inland and been found by Welsh miners, happily living in mines half a mile under the
surface. More commonly, these creatures infest restaurants, supermarkets and
bakeries.
Incidentally, cockroaches have never been conclusively linked to
epidemics of human disease. They groom themselves as meticulously as do
cats.
All cockroaches can easily survive three months, without food,
surviving only on water. They can survive a whole month without anything at
all! Cockroaches sample food before it enters their mouths using their antennae and other sensory bristles on their
bodies. Even when their eyes are painted over they still have the capacity to forage and find
food and have learned to shun foul-tasting poisons.
They can scavenge, live and breed almost anywhere.
German cockroaches need only a leaky tap and odd scraps to become an enduring
embarrassment to any abode, be it a house or boat. They can build a resistance to insecticides
and, if no food is available, they will eat wallpaper, books, wiring
and, as a last resort, they will turn cannibal and devour each other.
The egg cases they carry with them until they are due to hatch are called
ootheca. Each case holds between sixteen and thirty-six nymphs that reach maturity after moulting their exoskeletons several
times. Cockroaches abound everywhere except Polar regions.
The United States have spent millions of dollars trying to run a cockroach free
navy, air force and army. Seeking to reduce the use of chemicals in the
pursuit of pest control they have used chromosome mutations in genetically altered males to prevent full development of most of the embryos in the female
pod-shaped eggs and
causing even the mature embryos to eventually die. After a three month shipboard test in the American North Atlantic
fleet the Navy conceded victory to the cockroach.
Several electronic devices have been put on the market but impressed neither the cockroaches
nor the purchasers.
Last year, in America alone, $150 million dollars was spent on dusts,
sprays and baited traps!
It was my hope that, by the time my research ended, I
would be able to give you a 'fail-safe recipe' for eradicating your cockroach
problem but I think that I should leave the final word to Thomas Tuttle, manager of the insecticide branch of
S.C. Johnson and Son Ltd: "Cockroaches won't give up. Our struggle against the cockroach is not
hopeless, we are holding our own, but not much more. They just seem to love living with
us. Everything has a purpose but I really don't know what cockroaches have to
offer .... except a pain in the neck,'
Oh well! Not all bugs are cockroaches and it isn't everyone that hates
all bugs either... We even know some people who have a bunch of really
beautiful bugs you can hang on your walls...
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