🌻My beef with the roaches
They’re still haunting me
The other day I got a wild hair to write a good ol’ fashioned science news story. I logged onto my science news wire and scrolled for anything interesting, then pitched a few ideas to the web editor at my alma mater, Discover magazine. She took me up on a story about a lab that’s working on insect cyborgs—like literally they’re adding robotics to living bugs. It’s exactly the kind of interesting but also kinda weird story that I think Disco’s readers love the most, and it felt good to dust off my news-writing chops.
You can read the story here: A Swarm of Cyborg Insects Might Save You From Disaster
Assignment in hand, as I started to dig into the recent report and fill in the backstory, I noticed a key detail that I’d somehow glossed over before: The insects these researchers are working with are Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.
Oh, no no no.
It so happens I have a personal beef with Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.
If you’re not familiar (why would you be), these are bugs that you, my Funkyard readers, have certainly not encountered in the wild. They are not the same cockroaches that lived in your college apartment. They’re actually kept as pets, if you’re that kind of person. They’re the pet tarantula to your cellar spider.
They’re also fairly common to encounter in biology class, since you can keep a bunch of them alive rather easily, and they’re hard to hurt, so it’s not unethical to hand them out to students for little labs. (Also, practically speaking, they require way less paperwork than, say, mice.)
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Let’s be honest, most people aren’t terribly fond of cockroaches. And I include myself in that bucket. Although I’m probably more-okay-with-bugs than your average gal, I do prefer them to be outside and nowhere near my food or bed. And I absolutely get the full ick from the genre of basement-dwelling arthropods that I’ll call the creepy crawlies—house centipedes, etc. (I met my first camel cricket, in our Kansas City basement, just within the last few months. E-W-W.)
Growing up in the Chicago suburbs, we didn’t have roaches at all, just the occasional ant invasion or a single silverfish in the shower. In college, I had the great misfortune of moving into an earwig-infested (yes, infested) bedroom my senior year, but that’s a story for another day.
Since I never saw them anywhere, I assumed roaches just lived further south, preferring more tropical climes. But that theory was debunked when I experienced my first-ever roach problem—in graduate school at Michigan State, further north.
MSU’s Plant Biology building (where I resided), along with many other mid-20th-Century-and-older buildings on campus, was absolutely full of roaches. You’d find them in the microwave, or the coffee maker, or skittering across the floor. And they became much more active at dusk—so much so that I eventually learned to wrap up my work and get the heck out before night fell so as to not be overrun at my desk (which was hard in winter, when it’s dark by 5:00pm).
Once, in the middle of the day, a postdoc in our lab went to take a drink from her coffee mug and screamed—inside was a huuuge roach, nearly as long as the cup was tall. A true horror story.
At MSU I taught a couple semesters of ISB (Integrative Studies in Biology), which filled a gen-ed science requirement for non-science majors. It was a lab, so it met once a week for a couple hours, and since it was for non-majors, most of the students were fairly disengaged.
One lab each semester used Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches to teach a lesson about variation in nature. Literally just: measure this body part on a dozen roaches and take the average, maybe think of some hypotheses and collect data to test them. Basic stuff. But it did involve touching the roaches, at least briefly, to get them out of their terrarium and into a petri dish, where they would remain safely confined behind clear plastic for the duration of the lab.
As the teacher, I absolutely had to keep my cool. The teacher is not allowed to “eww,” or try to use pencils as chopsticks to pick up the poor bugs, or any of the other perfectly natural responses to the roaches.
Reader, we simply must admit that they are gross. They are living in a heap. There are dead ones in the tank. They’re all crawling all over each other. The tank is emitting an icky clicky crackly sound as they all move about. They reek. And, per their name, they literally hiss when disturbed. (They’re just expelling air out of their spiracles and not literally hissing, but same effect.)
But when you’re trying to convince your class of students that touching them is no big deal? You must out-brave each of them. I suddenly understood why you sometimes see an environmental educator do something like put a bug on their face. “See? No big deal! I’m not grossed out at all!” Fam, I deserve an Oscar. (And no, I did not put a roach on my face.)
The first semester I had to do the roach lab, it went totally fine. I think I was so shocked that I was able to just power through and not think about it. But when I had to do it again, the second or third semester, I found it much harder.
Seriously, all I had to do was reach into the tank, grab one roach between my thumb and forefinger, and move it to a petri dish and shut the lid. It’s five seconds, tops. Three if you’re good.
But during that five seconds, the roach is hissing, and writhing, and pushing off of you with its weirdly-strong little legs, all while you have a faceful of that smell. Oh God, that smell.
During one lab, I was feeling particularly queasy about the whole thing. I gave my little intro presentation about data collection and statistics, talked about the roaches, did my little demo (see kids? no big deal!), helped the students get set up, and promptly excused myself to go to the restroom. I just needed a minute.
I settle into the ladies room, safe and seated in my stall. I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths. We’re fine. It’s over. Everything is fine. No more roaches. Head in my hands, elbows to knees, I literally pray to Jesus to calm my nerves and give me strength to get through this day of roaches.
I open my eyes.
On the floor between my feet is the biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen.
JESUS H. CHRIST ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW!!! YOU ARE NOT SERIOUS!!! JESUS WE ARE FIGHTING!!!
From then on, I stopped putting on a brave face for students when it was time to handle the roaches.
Instead, I told them this story, and said, “if I can do it, you can do it.”