$500 Payoff for Biggest Bugs : 2 Cockroaches Measure Up as Champions at State Level

With a hissing Madagascar cockroach crawling over him, an Irvine exterminator company executive on Tuesday announced the California winners of the second annual Great American Roach-Off.

The contest, which paid $500 each for the two largest cockroaches found in the state, was won by Millie Ravitch of Palm Springs for a 1.7-inch American cockroach, and by two Oxnard boys who submitted a 1.18-inch Oriental roach.

Paul Parish, 9, and Nick Preston, 8, who found their winning bug while they were hiking in Santa Barbara, said they raised the cockroaches as part of a school science project to see what type of food the insects prefer.

The cockroaches were given a bottle cap of water, eggs and glue as well as paper, paste and cereal, which were their favorites, Nick said.

Paul said he planned to keep his pet alive in a tank near his father’s bed but decided to kill it when he heard of the contest.

His friend, Nick, said cockroaches are “fun to look at and see how they are made. I like to look at them and watch them eat things.” But, he said, “they gross my mother and my friends’ mothers out.”

The boys’ winnings will be donated to a three-day science camp for fourth- and fifth-graders at Elm Street Elementary School in Oxnard.

The judging by Western Exterminator Co., which sponsored the contest, began with a solemn procession of 50 dead cockroaches in satin-lined “coffins.”

“This is a very serious and sad event,” said company spokesman James Bowyer as the procession passed between three jars of about 100 live, crawling cockroaches and a buffet table that was virtually untouched by visitors. “But it is also a joyous event because we have lowered the cockroach population,” he continued as a mariachi band emerged playing “La Cucaracha.”

Six judges measured 50 entries with special devices, including a digital calibration tool accurate to one-1,000th of an inch, Bowyer said as he flashed $5,000, which the national winner will take home.

“We’ve got a good shot at it,” said Bowyer of California’s chance to win the national competition, to be held in Philadelphia on July 7. “We grow them as big here as they grow them” in Florida, where last year’s champ was found.

Bowyer said the insects can best be avoided by sealing cracks and crevices, reducing moisture in the house and keeping garbage hidden, particularly cockroaches’ favorites: beer and bread.

But, added Mike Rust, a UC Riverside urban entomologist, cockroaches are one of the most durable creatures in existence and will likely survive almost anything except lack of a heat source.

The American cockroach (Periplaneta Americana) came over on slave ships from the Ivory Coast around 1450, Rust said. They originally settled in the hot, moist equatorial regions of the continent before spreading and breeding. The Oriental roach (Blatta Orientales) came later from Europe, he said.

On earth, there are about 3,500 species of cockroaches (a word which might have come from a latin word meaning “to shun light”). About 20 types cause problems for humans, particularly the transmission of diseases, he said.

The most common type of the pest is the German cockroach, which lives about six months and will produce about 350 offspring in its lifetime, Rust said. For a creature with such longevity, he said, the cockroach serves little purpose other than disturbing humans and feeding other animals.

“It’s just another member of the food chain,” Rust said.