The Death of Logan
Cockroaches, like the Wise Men, originally lived in the East. They were at first far from hardy—wretched travelers, hating changes of climate. But when England began trading with the Orient, the cockroach grew venturesome, and began putting to sea as a stowaway. It was thus he reached England.
He settled down at first in her seaports. Remained there for years. People inland heard of him, or saw him if they went to the coast, but supposed themselves immune from his visits. Now he owns the whole island. And wherever the Englishman has journeyed, or settled, or trafficked, except perhaps on the ice-floes of Labrador, we now find the cockroach.
We all know his habits. He prefers to live in kitchens and bakeries. Eats all kinds of food. Eats shoes and the bindings of books. Also eats his own relatives. Any relative that isn't good and lively is at once eaten up.
You can tell the sexes apart (if you want to) by this: The males don't drag their stomachs on the ground the way the females do, and they have better wings. Their wings are not good enough to use much, but still, they have little ones.
The most surprising thing about roaches is that they live several years. Scientists say maybe five. Owing to this they get to know all of a family's ways, and can't be caught napping; they have plenty of time to study roach powders and learn to digest them. They dislike castor oil, though, and keep away from where it has been rubbed.
Cockroaches are intelligent beings. Their natures are human. They are not like other insects, any more than dogs are like other animals. I wish some man of science and sympathy would interpret their lives.
That book that I dream of on roaches: will it ever be written? Brown Beauty, or Only a Cockroach, by Mary Gook Twillee—a book that little children would read with wet eyes Sunday evenings. No, that sounds like a pamphlet from the Society for the Prevention of Stepping on Cockroaches. We want nothing humanitarian. Still less, a Work on the subject. We want a poet to do for the cockroach what Maeterlinck has done for the Bee.
If nobody else will, I shall probably have to do it myself.
Since boyhood (I shall begin) I have felt the injustice of men to the roach. Or not men, no; but women. Men are in this matter more tolerant, more live-and-let-live in their ways. But women have condemned the roach not only unheard, but unjudged. Not one of them has ever tried petting a roach to gain his affection. Not one of them has studied him or encouraged him to show his good side. Some cockroaches, for instance, are exceedingly playful and gay, but what chance have they to show this, when being stepped on, or chased with a broom? Suppose we had treated dogs this way; scared them; made fugitives of them!
No, the human race, though kind to its favorites, is cruel to others. The pale little, lovable cockroach has been given no show. If a housewife would call to her roaches as she does to her hens, "Here chick-chick, here cock-cock, here roaches," how they would come scampering! They would eat from her hand and lay eggs for her—they do now, in fact.
"But the eggs are not legible—I mean edible," an excited reader objects. How do you know, my poor prejudiced reader? Have you ever tried them? And suppose they are not. Is that the fault of the cockroach or God?
We should learn that blind enmity is not the attitude to take toward strangers. The cockroach has journeyed from Asia to come to our shores; and because he looked queer, like most Asiatics, he has been condemned from the start. The charges are that he is dirty and that he eats the food we leave lying around. Well, well, well! Eats our food, does he? Is that a crime? Do not birds do the same? And as to his being dirty, have you ever kept dogs in your home? One dog will bring in more dust and mud and loose hairs in a day, than a colony, an empire, of cockroaches will in a year.
It is easy enough to drive cockroaches away if you wish. Not with powder or poison: this only arouses their obstinacy. The right way is to import other insects that prey upon roaches. The hawk-ticks exterminate them as readily as wimples do moles. The only thing to remember is that then you have the hawk-ticks on hand, and they float around the ceiling, and pounce down, and hide in your ears.
You may be sure that some insects will live with you. It's only a question which kind.
I remember Mr. Burbank once denied this when we talked of the matter. Alluding to the fact that the cockroach likes to eat other roaches, he said why not breed a roach that wouldn't eat anything else? When one introduced these into the home they would first eat the old timers, and then quietly devour each other until all were gone.
But how could a home remain bare of insects? Nature abhors such a vacuum. Some men would like to cover the whole world with porcelain tiles, and make old Mother Earth, as we know her, disappear from our view. They would sterilize and scrub the whole planet, so as to make the place sanitary. Well, I too feel that way at times: we all have finicky moments. But in my robust hours I sympathize with Nature. A hygienic kitchen is unnatural. It should be swarming with life. (The way mine is.)
I see a great deal of the roach when I visit my kitchen. His habits, to be sure, are nocturnal. But, then, so are mine. However, with a little arranging, it is simple to prevent awkward clashes. I do not like cockroaches on my table at supper, for instance. Very well, I merely get me a table with carved spiral legs. The roach cannot climb up such legs. To hump himself over them bruises him, and injures his stomach. And if he tries to follow the spiral and goes round and round, he soon becomes dizzy and falls with plaintive cries to the floor. He can climb up my own legs, since they are not spiral, you say? Yes, but I rub castor oil on them before I enter the kitchen.
The cockroach has a fascinating personality. He is not socialistic and faithful, like the ant, for example: he is anarchistic, wild, temperamental, and fond of adventure. He is also contemplative by nature, like other philosophers. How many an evening, at midnight, when I have wanted a sandwich, I have found him and his friends standing still, lost in thought, by the sink. When I poke him up, he blinks with his antennae and slowly makes off. On the other hand, he can run at high speed when the cook is pursuing him. And he zigzags his course most ingeniously. He uses his head. Captain Dodge, of the British Navy, who first used this method to escape from a submarine, is said to have learned how to zigzag from the cockroaches aboard his own ship. They should go down in history, those roaches, with the geese that saved Rome.
Again and again I have tried to make a pet of the cockroach, for I believe under his natural distrust he has an affectionate nature. But some hostile servant has invariably undone my work. The only roach I succeeded in taming was hardly a pet, because he used to hide with the others half the time when he saw me, and once in a fit of resentment he bit a hole in my shoe. Still, he sometimes used to come at my call when I brought him warm tea. Poor fellow! poor Logan!—as I called him. He had a difficult life. I think he was slightly dyspeptic. Perhaps the tea was not good for him. He used to run about uttering low, nervous moans before moulting; and when his time came to mate, I thought he never would find the right doe. How well I remember my thrill when he picked one at last, and when I knew that I was about to see their nuptial flight. Higher and higher they circled over the clean blue linoleum, with their short wings going so fast they fairly crackled, till the air was electric: and then, swirling over the dresser, their great moment came. Unhappily, Logan, with his usual bad luck, bumped the bread-box. The doe, with a shrill, morose whistle, went and laid on the floor; but Logan seemed too balked to pursue her. His flight was a failure.
He rapidly grew old after this, and used to keep by himself. He also got into the habit of roaming around outdoors at night. Hated to see other roaches mating by the bread-box, perhaps. As he was too big to crawl back in under the door when we shut it, he was sometimes locked out when he roamed, and had to wait until morning. This in the end caused his death. One winter evening, blocked at the door, he climbed the fire-escape and tried to get in the bathroom window. But it chanced to be shut. He hung there all night, barking hoarsely—and I heard him, but never thought it was Logan. When I went to look at the thermometer in the morning, there he lay in the snow.