Lessons from Nazi cockroaches

In the nightmare I am very small perhaps two centimetres high My tormentor towers over me a hundred times taller He is a dark brown winged monster wearing a familiar helmet with a swastika on both sides His paperthin brown wings move up and down slowly and his two whiskers sweep to and fro like a searchlight making me shudder when they lightly graze my faceldquoAch so scheisskopfrdquo he thunders in his raspy voice ldquoDo you admit failure Do you surrenderrdquo One whisker caresses my face I can smell the sewers on itldquoYesrdquo I croak ready to be destroyed like millions of my countrymen ldquoYou win You will always winrdquoldquoYes whatrdquo he roars some foetid juice dripping from his jawsldquoYes mein Herrrdquo I reply ldquoI surrender Eat me for breakfast I am readyrdquoReality is not far from the nightmare I have thousands of cockroaches in my Bangkok kitchen Fully grown they are deceptively small at 15 cm but they are still too fast and too clever for me They tunnel into my potatoes fall into my dishwashing detergent and die they thrive in the deep cold within my fridge and they try to enter my ears when I sleep Their babies equally formidable are like sesame seeds easily invading tightly closed tins and utensils through narrow gaps and shitting on my biscuitsMy lot are called German cockroaches Blatella germanica Thatrsquos how I know theyrsquore leftover NazisI learned something extraordinary they have been around for nearly 320 million years surviving floods ice ages droughts dinosaur wipeouts nuclear bombs radioactive radiation and volcanoes They are unkillable All 4600 species of cockroaches will survive ArmageddonSuddenly I am on full alert As you all know we are well into the planetrsquos seventh apocalypse Despite the happy clueless smiles on our faces we are all soon going to be blips on the radar racing towards extinction along with most other species on EarthCockroaches will be around after the partyrsquos over and we are gone An intelligent reader may ask what can we learn from cockroaches about surviving as the world endsAnd who among us are already enough like cockroaches and therefore likely to be around when the smoke and dust settleCockroaches have acquired certain valuable survivaloriented behaviours the result of millions of years of evolution Let me list them for youThey respect nothing Nothing is sacred to a cockroach It will go anywhere and eat whatever it finds It demonstrates its disrespect by shitting and puking where it sleeps in the cracks and under the tiles of your house in the places that provide it with food and nutrition my kitchen and any place in betweenThey treat everything as theirs Cockroaches have no boundaries They will enter your fridge your prayer room your yoghurt and your ear when you sleep They treat everything as made to feed them and though they prefer sweet fatty proteinrich foods they will eat cloth and thin plastic at a pinch They own you and they own what you ownThey stay out of the light Cockroaches like vampires come out at night in darkness They prefer not to be seen as they conduct their nefarious acts of plunder pillage and desecration They are highly sensitive to the spotlight and if they feel it is falling too brightly on them they scurry awayThey rejoice in filth Cockroaches have no standards They see gold in garbage and silver in slush They prefer the drain to the palace Their normal habitat is deep inside sewers and gutters whence they will enter your house through the plumbing A clean hygienic home is to a cockroach what holy water is to a devilThey make terrible friends A cockroach will gladly devour a fellow cockroach at a pinch even if it is dead It will eat its nymphs if the situation is dire enough The nymphs will happily eat each other as wellItrsquos a roacheatroach worldThey are cowards They donrsquot fight they run Thanks to its extraordinary threatdetection powers a cockroach can detect approaching danger in milliseconds Their cercimdashappendages under their abdomenmdashare exquisitely sensitive to small changes in air currents such as the one caused by my hand as it moves to squash it One of the worldrsquos fastest insects it can flee the scene of crime at nearly 5 km per hour running straight sideways or upside down on the ceilingTheyrsquod rather not know Like certain human beings theyrsquod rather not see things clearly and prefer a foggy view They have compound eyes made up of lenses called ommatidia and my Nazi cockroach may have as many as 2000 But what they see is a grey blur not details Their eyes are designed to detect movement and changes in lightWhich kind of human being already has these valuable traits and will likely survive with the cockroach You donrsquot know Oh pishWell cast your vote and come back and Irsquoll tell youYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper