Cockroaches
by George Zidbeck
In mixed company, mention that word in the title, and you’ll witness immediate facial patterns of disgust. Maybe even a few readers will cringe and consider moving to another conversational circle without hearing what I have to say on the subject. Oh, the horror of occupying a dwelling infested with such an insect. Many State- siders, who have lived where such creatures abounded, might recall switching on a light in a dark kitchen, and repulsed from spotting hundreds of cockroaches scurrying about the cabinetry. Or worse, witnessing their mass feasting on dishes left out that contained a smattering of leftovers. Ugh!
Panama Cockroach
|
I’ve got to fess up here. When I see or hear the word cockroach, my face lights up with a smile. Many modern residents in the tropics (even in temperate zones) have refrigerant air conditioning that inhibits occupancy by those nefarious critters. But, for residents in the Panama Canal Zone of the mid 1930s thru 1944, the Quartermaster Dept. offered no such an appliance for family homes. Therefore, wherever you boarded, the roaches boarded.
Keep in mind I’m not gonna reference the small vermin known as the German Brown. Naagh. We had real roaches in Panama – big ones that took flight and might even awaken someone from a sound sleep. You can double check via the internet what I’m telling ya, but such a search will also confirm that Panama has more species of cockroaches than any other country. Plus, it has the largest and the smallest with varied colorings and configurations. When very young, I enjoyed crawling underneath those wooden homes mounted on wooden pilings slathered in creosote, where I stick scratched in the loose dirt hoping to uncover the gray model slightly over an inch long, ¾ of an inch wide that displayed a gray plated shell that reminded me of a rhinoceros hide. Even when exposed to the surface, such creatures moved at a slow pace rather than scurry like most roaches
German Cockroach |
Some might wonder why Panama might be so blessed with an abundance of cockroaches of such varied attributes. Consider the word, heterosis. Translation: hybrid vigor. Think mule. And where did this intra-species explosion originate?
Long before a land bridge connected South and north America, ocean waters flowed freely between the two separated land masses. Once tectonic forces created the cordillera that joined the two continents, animals moved and mated freely north and south thereby allowing natural selection to fill the niches with new subspecies.
Of the most numerous roaches that flourished by moving into dwellings occupied by humans, by far those who were shiny brown sheathed — an inch or more long — somehow managed to hide quite well during the day. And they are the ones that put a smile on my face when I hearken back to my young days on Barnebey St. in Balboa, Canal Zone.
Why the smile? Because periodically Mom announced after supper and the cleaning up, “Alright children, tonight we are going to get rid of the cockroaches. You three know the program. I’ll spray the closets. You,” she added, pointing to me and my brother Bill, “will swat them with rolled up newspaper. Your sister will sweep them up and throw them in the trash.” The death squad thus anointed and armed, Mom with a spray gun mounted over a metal canister filled with a liquid roach poison called Flit*, my brother and I armed with rolled up newspapers, and my sister Bootsie carrying a broom taller than she plus a dust pan, marched from room to room.
After removing all the clothes from the closets, a healthy measure of spray would be misted, whishhh-whishhh, into each closet, one room at a time. When the little buggers attempted to exit, we’d smash ‘em and splat ‘em, and sweep up the smelly carcasses along with their expelled egg casings. The evening of mass slaughter never totally freed our residence of cockroaches, but our assault squad enjoyed the one-sided battle.
The majority of residential quarters were wooden or concrete four family dwellings – two below, two atop. Long after I had left the Canal Zone and our family relocated to California, I wondered why all four families didn’t agree on one night for killing those vermin. Sure, we’d chase them out of our home for a spell, but those that survived our onslaught then moved into our neighbors’ units where they’d multiply sufficiently to where that family would have their kill night and drive many of the survivors back into our quarters.
A final Canal Zone cockroach observation: Likely you’ve encountered tales of how a mix of animals can foretell a calamity. For example, dogs and horses acting skittish before an earthquake. I can neither prove nor disprove such scuttlebutt. But, I can attest to coming home after school one day, readying to climb the back steps to my home above the basement. The air offered no movement, and the clear sky made for full sunshine that weekday mid-afternoon. Even before hitting the bottom landing, I spied hordes of cockroaches streaming down the steps into the bottom level concrete floor. I didn’t give that mass exodus any special note at the time, eager to put my schoolbooks inside so I could go back out and play.
That night, however, a fierce tropical thunderstorm roared in from the Pacific and felled a number of trees in our area. I’m certain those roaches sensed the coming, extreme low pressure and sought sanctuary in the basement. Small animals with small brains perhaps, but they’ve been around for over sixty million years whereas we’ve only begun our human journey. I’m putting my money on the cockroaches.
*The manufacturer of Flit advertised their product with the slogan, “Quick Henry, the Flit!”
|
