Posted on 02/02/2009 2:53:06 PM PST by nickcarraway
i thought of all the massacres and slaughter of persecuted insects at the hands of cruel humans and i cried aloud to heaven and i knelt on all six legs and vowed a vow of vengeance i shall organize the insects i shall drill them i shall lead them i shall fling a billion times a billion billion risen insects in an army at the throats of all you humans
From "archy declares war" by Don Marquis, this poem reflects the rage of one cockroach at the eternal war between humans and cockroaches.
Most people kill cockroaches on sight. In 2006, Six Flags amusement parks granted unlimited line-jumping privileges to anyone who could eat a live Madagascan giant hissing cockroach. (The record was 36 in one minute!)
The insects have been used - "archy" would have insisted abused - as objects of fear or disgust in numerous horror movies, and on television shows such as "Fear Factor." Madagascan "hissers" are maligned by these filmmakers, since they are large, wingless, don't bite and are slow-moving.
Completely harmless to humans, no one finds them in their homes; they are not adapted to cohabitating with us. Of 3,500 known cockroach species, only about six species - less than 1 percent - have "negative associations with humans." Some people even encrust hissers with Swarovski crystals and wear them as necklaces. Others keep them as pets, or as classroom teaching aids. The Pueblo Zoo has collections in its Education Animal Room and on display in the Discovery Room, and also employs them in educational programs.
These "living fossils" have changed little in 250 million years. Since long before the dinosaurs, most cockroach species have benefited the world by devouring the detritus littering forest floors. Without them, we'd be wading in a worldwide compost heap. They also supply high-protein nutrition for countless other birds and animals, many of which are much-loved by our own species.
Web sites offer teachers' raves about Madagascars as classroom aids. Living peacefully in glass tanks, they dispel ideas that it's a "bug-eat-bug" world, helping students overcome negative preconceptions. In art classes, kids learn to draw from nature, symmetrical paper cutting, observation practice and more. One biology class conducted "roach pulls" to determine how much more than their own weight in pennies Madagascars could drag, and discovered that a human with a cockroach's strength could haul thousands of pounds. Another class tried to determine whether cockroaches could memorize a maze to lettuce rewards (one, Gerdie, "cheated" by climbing over the tops of walls).
Too bad archy didn't know about these benevolent interactions some humans have with his brethren. Maybe he'd have felt more merciful toward us . . .
Cockroaches hiss best...
when you throw the log they are in on the fire.
There has got to be a reason that a visceral sense of loathing and disgust for those things got tucked away in our lizard brains. In a secular sense, in Richard Dawkins’ world, this was probably because our ancient ancestors were created by aliens bearing similar shapes and made the hissing sound while sucking our brains out with a straw. In a Christian sense, while God is clearly inordinately fond of beetles, He must have decided that perhaps we should have a well-developed fight or flight response with respect to things not immediately tastey that hiss at us. Go figure.
/center>
They must be endearing to a few folks because they are ugly, and fussy (hissing) like liberals, but a hissing cockroach can never ever raise your taxes.
Why does the movie “Joe’s Apartment” come to mind...
I was sure this was about Pelosi.....
Some humans are very strange.
I love hissing cockroaches! We worked with them in biology lab and they were tons of fun. We let them crawl around on the table and sit on our fingers, and a few kids even took pictures of them with their cell phones. They’re really neat creatures.....so don’t compare them to Congress!
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Thanks nick.Some people even encrust hissers with Swarovski crystals and wear them as necklaces. Others keep them as pets, or as classroom teaching aids. The Pueblo Zoo has collections in its Education Animal Room and on display in the Discovery Room, and also employs them in educational programs. These "living fossils" have changed little in 250 million years.They must be going with walkers by now though. |
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