Roaches

[cloudy_one]

I can completely see why people see cockroaches as pests.  In so many ways they really are.  There are tons of them.  They don't really do us humans any good, though they do us bad, usually in the form of bites and such.  They don't look particularly cute or attractive at all.  Heck, a lot of people don't mind beetles, but these don't remind us of beetles (though they are).  Usually they don't show up unless the place is dirty enough for them to carve out a comfortable living.  Besides that, they're basically indestructible.  Sure, you can step on them, but try getting to the ones in the walls or under the floor boards.  Even with a good poisonous dusting you can't usually get rid of all of them.

Having said that, I also want to point out that for the longest time I didn't like cockroaches either.  Over the last few months I've made a conscious change to that though.  Our current place (which we will be moving out of soon enough) has a decent roach problem.  I don't like killing them.  I'll do mercy killings if they're still twitchy or something like that but basically dead, but that's it.  If they're turned over on their backs, I'll turn them right-side-up.  I don't mind them being around personally (though sometimes it's annoying to move them out of the shower if I'm getting ready for one, they don't like to cooperate, of course, neither do the grandfather spiders or the polies).  These ideas probably seem pretty gross to most people.  At one point I did complain about how they seem to be all over the place in our house, and Sam mentioned that maybe they just want to be noticed.  They don't want their existence or their deaths to be "just another notch."

I haven't been too sure where my recent affinity for roaches has come from.  I'm still not happy to get bitten occasionally.  But that's not enough for me to want to evict them or anything.  A few months back I even wrote a little story:

http://feil.livejournal.com/25090.html

I'm thinking that they're creatures like any others really.  What makes them worse to have around than most other bugs?  There's a host of spiders which bite us in our sleep, but as a household we don't mind those really (short of widows and recluses of course).  It might be just me trying to be different, but I feel like it's more than that.  I tie the roaches a lot to humanity.  I mean, besides the obvious non-too-flattering comparison, there's a dependence of roaches on people.  They wouldn't be as successful if it weren't for us humans.  If we were to go extinct, roaches may survive the reason we died, but without us around and our environmental advantages (heat, etc.) they would die out in mass numbers.  That idea happens to be backed by National Geographic. 

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/aftermath-population-zero-3225/Videos#tab-Videos/05037_00

On a personal level, maybe there's an idealistic connection between me and the roaches.  Going back to Sam's talk about wanting to be noticed, maybe it's a reflection of what I want people to do with me.  If I can give the time of day to flip a roach (a creature "noone" likes) that others "should" be able to give me the time of day.  In my case not necessarily deservedly so.  That's sort of what I'm thinking mainly.  I am a bit of an attention hog, and while I don't like to admit it, I enjoy drama (*shivers*).

Beyond those things, though, I do believe they're pretty fascinating critters.  I sometimes wish other people would look beyond the "EWW, GROSS!" stereotype and look at them the way they would at ladybugs or ants.