MY BATTLE WITH A GIANT COCKROACH

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       1       676    4857        1057      438         92

             2       687    5155         1277      377         95

             3       616    5170         1264      444       108

             4       254    4494         1111       610         74

             5       251    3572          535       421       173

             6       378    3573          656       474       111

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

             8       890    5507        1187       491       100

             9       960    5411        1199       479       118

           10       849    5416        1270       521       140

           11       731    4995          968       543       111

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           13       465    3729          770       540         93

           14       935    5414        1341       586       174

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           16       963    5742        1299       680       216

           17       946    5559        1100       676       135

           18       813    5011          885       543       144

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           20       545    4040          718       596       140

           21     1119    5669        1346       671        195

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           23     1166    6318        1317       755        153

           24     1141    6199        1178       761        250

           25       908    5689        1111       690        312

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
           27      596     4200         627       636        298

Summary:

• Worldwide, both new cases and new deaths/day are climbing.
• From the New York Times daily briefing today:

The number of new daily cases has risen more than 20 percent in both Europe and Canada over the past week. It’s up about 40 percent in Australia and Japan. Hong Kong reported 145 cases yesterday, its highest one-day count yet and the sixth straight day of more than 100 new cases.  However:

• After an outbreak among the Miami Marlins, Major League Baseball postponed two games yesterday. In South Korea, by contrast, the season continues unabated — and fans were allowed to attend games for the first time this season.  

• What are we doing wrong?  MLB is close to cancelling its season and NFL players are opting out of playing.  Let's see how the NBA bubble works.  College sports?  Tony Fauci has a better chance to become the season closer for the Washington Nationals than contact professional/college sports this year.  And incidentally, his rookie Topps card sold more than 50,000 yesterday, breaking the all-time record of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. last year.
• Like the youth of my day I collected these cards.  I have a complete 792-card set of Topps' 1952 season.

But to my subject of the day, I have a mild form of katsaridaphobia, a fear of cockroaches.  If you are too, you are safe to keep reading for I will be careful about not showing the ones that particularly scare you.  These roaches are large and they fly. 

Yes, I had a battle with a giant cockroach, and, of all the places, in my 15 Craigside apartment, a seniors' community, a sterile site that does everything to protect the residents from diseases, whether from microorganism or insects or humans.  No outbreaks of anything here.

I've now lived in this cocoon for more than six years, and the only confirmed sighting of a large cockroach inside this building was a few months ago when my next door neighbor told me he saw one sneaking into his apartment through the vent.  He had a can of Raid and killed it.  I've caught at least a dozen using Hoy Hoy on my lanai.

Mind you, our location is in a cockroach infested zone, which includes the entire State of Hawaii.  You would think they would only survive in a city environment.  But no, I once went fishing for menpachi at Kahuku Ranch, which is an isolated spot on the Big Island of Hawaii.  This is night fishing off the rocks next to pounding surf.  They come out in a red school only when it gets dark.  Caught a couple and then noticed there were large cockroaches everywhere, and flying around.  They apparently live in the grassy shrubs.  Never went back.  Mind you, a menpachi is about the best tasting fish, with shoyu sugar sauce or just grilled.  The problem is that they have so many small bones that I gave up on this fish a long time ago.

I have a friend whose home I will never visit because she said after coming back from a trip, she killed 50 cockroaches.  She uses a large open jar lined with bacon grease and bacon bait.  She sent me a photo of a whole bunch of them trapped in her jar.  She swears they can't fly nor climb up the wall.  However, rather than show you her impressive catch, here is bacon.

In 32 years living in my penthouse at 2101 Craigside, I used Hoy Hoy Trap-a-Roach to capture at least a thousand.  Some of them could have won the annual largest roach in Hawaii competition, which was discontinued.  My posting on HAWAII HAD A SERIOUS COCKROACH CRISIS now and then reaches the top of what article was most read that week.

Oh, that article also segued into centipedes.  Here is a photo of a prehistoric 8-foot version:

This millipede below was said to be close to 9 feet long.  Looks like the same species as the above:

As far as a prehistoric cockroach, the best Mother Nature did, apparently, was a 3.5 inch roach that live 300 million years ago.  This one was found by a student at Ohio State University, Cary Easterday.  He found this fossilized specimen in an Ohio mine.  That's him.

The person who bought my apartment reported to me that the elevator shaft right at the top is from where they come.  He has a gallon container of Spectracide, which he says seems to be doing a good job.  The active ingredient is triazicide.

Why are these cockroaches up there?  They fly and crawl to the top of a building and have nowhere else to go.  At least that's my theory.

The American Roach is the main villain.  Especially the GOP cockroach, best known as Trumpus Americanus.

What is the largest cockroach?  This giant burrowing cockroach (Macropanesthis rhinoceros) is said to weigh up to 35 ounces.  They are found in Australia.  

The Madagascar hissing roach grows up to three inches.  But these don't bother me because they don't fly.

I saw a bigger one.  A friend came back from Ecuador and had a monster in a formaldehyde jar.  I would guess, maybe 4 inches long, with antenna that must have been a foot long.  He said that at night they flew in circles around a light...if one landed on you, their bite was poisonous.  That story so frightened me that I avoided that country.  That one could well have been the Blaberus giganteus from Central America, which grows to 3.5 inches and lives in a cave.

All that buildup was necessary for me to share with you my battle with a giant cockroach.  

• It was a couple of weeks ago (it's taken me this long to build-up the courage to write this posting) when I was ready to go to bed and noticed a large cockroach in my room on the window.  
• I quickly found my Raid can and crept up.  
• It was just above my aquaria, so I had to be careful not to shoot the spray into the fish tanks.  
• So with  considerable trepidation and pounding heart I got closer and closer until....well, it was outside the window.  What a relief!
• Here, I can get brave, so I tapped on the glass to shake it off.  I couldn't use a hammer for I might shatter my protection.
• So I blocked this view with my drapery, expecting it to fly away by the morning.
• But I had difficulty sleeping.
• Glad I had no nightmare about cockroaches, and worry a bit about tonight.
• But when I woke up, to my consternation, it was still there, in the same spot:

• These thoughts came to mind:
• The windows had just been cleaned, so if it just died there, I would see it for another six months.  There was no antenna movement.
• Thought about getting a maintenance person to use a long pole from the roof to shake it off.  There was no other way to reach it.  He had to use a rope to tie himself to something, for he falling off was certainly not worth that dastardly roach.
• So while I was thinking of a better solution, I placed a small stick-um to at least block the sight:

• Began to write my blog of the day, but a few minutes later it slightly crawled down to look at me.  Moved the square a bit.  It crawled down to again watch me.  This went on for what seemed like an hour, but was probably for 10 minutes.
• Finally, I looked up and it was gone.  It never came back.

Ugh...no way to end a posting.  Here, Hey Jude, a rare clip of the Beatles from 1968...52 years ago! Said Paul:

The ballad evolved from "Hey Jules", a song McCartney wrote to comfort John Lennon's son, Julian, after Lennon had left his wife for the Japanese artist Yoko Ono. The lyrics espouse a positive outlook on a sad situation, while also encouraging "Jude" to pursue his opportunities to find love.

More recently, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Sting, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffet, Carl Perkins, Phil Collins and others, but even that was almost a quarter century ago in London.  Last performance for Perkins (who had his Million Dollar Quartet mix with Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis in 1956), for he died soon thereafter.

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