When conjuring up images of Australia, one might think of warm weather, beautiful beaches, laid back people, rugby, or kangaroos. Pessimists might talk of sharks and spiders and snakes. But what about the lowly cockroach?
These badboys are ubiquitous down under. Myth might suggest that they live in dirty places but in actuality, they are quite simply just everywhere. If you have a clean house, you simply have clean cockroaches. The point is that you can’t escape the inevitable: cockroaches are taking over Australia!
Ok, so that’s a little excessive, but the damned things are so gross. But why are they so gross? Are we cultured into thinking them as gross? Have we given the cockroach a underserved rap? (you know you’re a geek when you’re planning studies in your head to examine attitudes towards cockroaches).
Let’s take a closer look: they can overcome incredible odds, and can even survive nuclear radiation from an atomic blast. They can go innumerable days without eating, and will eat just about anything. They are adaptive and cunning, and reproduce like mad. They are amazing little things.
So maybe we are too anal about this. Maybe our religious cleaning and incessant spray of RAID is overkill. Maybe cockroaches deserve a place in our homes? Will Greenpeacer’s of the future be chanting “Save the Roaches!”? Admittedly, they probably already do, just not those kind of roaches.
But seriously, we won’t miss these little nasties (certainly Leigh wont!, but for the time being, they are the reality. Sydney is a crazy amazing city with so much to offer, but one thing it can keep is the cockroaches.
