“Cockroaches are the insect people are most repulsed by,” observes Texas A&M entomologist Dr. Much of the reason for this is emotional rather than scientific in nature. Nevertheless, exterminators say that the cockroach is our state’s most complained about insect, and their biggest money-making pest.
To be sure, the cockroach does eat and/or spoil tens of millions of dollars worth of food in Texas each year, but it does not, like its cousin the termite, devour whole rooftops. Oddly enough, the cockroach does not cause the kind of easily measurable direct damage to plants and property that other insect pests do.
What’s more, despite a natural inclination to retreat, the cockroach can quite easily bite-and has even been known to attack-unsuspecting human beings. It does not merely look hideous, it really is dirty, disgusting, and hazardous to human health, capable of communicating nearly a hundred different diseases and unswervingly dedicated to living in, eating, producing, and spreading the substance for which the Spanish named it. Despite the occasional claims of roachophiles, the insect is not better than it looks.
They called it cacarucha, later cucaracha, a derivative of their word for excrement. The Spanish, from whom we get the word “cockroach,” were much more insightful about the bug. Other cultures, including our own, have used cockroaches for medicinal purposes-often as a diuretic or In Finland and in many European countries, the cockroach was once revered as a protector of life and allowed- to live freely in the homes of even the most prominent people. Strange as it may seem, such cockroach cubism is not unprecedented. Along with air conditioning, the cockroach is found in both our mansions and our slums, an ubiquitous equalizer of all types of humanity. Being both the hottest state in the nation and one of the most urban, Texas is an ideal breeding ground, the incubation center for the entire Southwest and points beyond. Although this record has not been contested, scientists say there must be many places in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and El Paso which exceed that cockroach count. Nevertheless, Austin, our capital city, has gained a wide reputation as a “capital of cockroaches.” Last summer, the Austin Sun, a weekly newspaper well qualified to know, made national news with its claim that a house in Austin holds the world’s record for the most roaches in a single residence: some 50,000. There is just no effective way to count-or even estimate-cockroaches.
Scientists say it is safe to say Texas has more cockroaches than any other state, but they cannot tell us how overrun we really are. The fact is that roaches in the Florida Keys grow up to an inch longer than any cockroaches found in Texas, and some species in Central America have a six-inch wingspan and measure four inches in length. Durden concedes that Texas cockroaches often look larger than scientific records show, but there can be no doubt that Texas does not have the largest roaches in the world, or even in the nation. Preposterous, you say? Well, that’s the claim of University of Texas paleoentomologist Dr, Christopher Durden, who studies such matters for a living and presumably gets hardship pay for it. But it may come as something of a shock to learn that even the largest of these does not exceed 34 millimeters in length, or about one and three-eighth inches. It should come as no surprise to learn that Texas has billions and billions, even trillions of cockroaches after all, at least half of them are in your kitchen.
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