It’s a joke. Like sending the new guy to get some flight line or to the gunny to get a prick E7. You should have realized it as there is no OOD brave enough to take on a 3 foot cockroach with a 1911. HQ had a fairly constant stream of young Marines dropping in to see the cockroach.
I accidently read it as 3 inches which I could believe. I saw a photo taken in the 1980’s where someone cross out the Pendleton in chalk and it read Camp Cockroach. It brought back so many memories and I laughed that nothing had changed in 20 years.