550 reasons to buy this book for your beloved: COCKROACHES of Oz With Father's Day on the way any month now and just 224 days until Christmas, The Reg thinks you deserve a little personal shopping assistance. The idea of offering such help came to mind after the publication of A Guide to the Cockroaches of Australia, an AU$49.95 tome that immortalises “most of the 550 described species …
German, oriental and american are the only roach species you will find in blighty.
The germans are quite small but the other two can get sodding huge.
I deal with em quite often and they still scare the bejesus out of me when they suddenly appear out of a mouse control box that they have decided to inhabit...
Hmmmm,
"stubbies" in some parts of OZ also means work shorts ie " I'll wear my stubbies today". I can't remember any of my stubbies - glass or cloth - looking like females, but after a couple of the beer-filled glass ones I certainly like looking AT females.
Paris cos I'll be she'd look good in (or with) a pair of stubbies.
Once upon a time, I lived in a room in a hostel that attracted the odd cockroach. These were big, brown, flying beasts. I used to try to evacuate them from my room by opening a window and harassing them with a broom until they flew out.
Once, however, I returned from a night out to find a cockroach on the wall near my bed, and this cockroach, rather than fly out of the window, crawled under the bed. Now, the bed was a bit past its prime, with the result that the mattress was no longer supported by the grille above the floor, and had slumped down. So I could not try to get the cockroach out from beneath the bed and I was too tired to move the whole bed, and worried that it would fall to pieces anyway if I did so.
So I went to sleep, with some misgivings: I knew this wasn't the last I would hear of the cockroach.
In the middle of the night, I had a series of dreams; in one of them, someone was touching me lightly on the chest. I awoke. It was the cockroach, walking along my chest! I got up and frantically shook it away from me. The bastard darted down for safety...into my boxer shorts!!! After some dancing to get it off my b****cks, I managed to get rid of it.
The same thing had happened to me on a beach, at night, a few years earlier, as I was trying to flirt with a pretty girl - I mean, the bit about a cockroach getting into my underpants. She couldn't make out why I was suddenly disco dancing in the utter quiet of a deserted beach, beneath the moon and the stars...
Sounds like perfect coffee table material to weed out the more self-important people in the world if you ask me.
The book on the making of the McLaren F1 is a good one to find proper petrolheads - leave it partially uncovered and see if someone spots it. If so, they are probably as into cars as you are...
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http://www.amazon.com/Mammals-Madagascar-A-Complete-Guide/dp/030012550X
mine is on my bookshelf. Out of date a week after I bought it due to two new types being discovered.
Then there is this one
http://www.amazon.com/Indo-Pacific-Nudibranchs-Sea-Slugs/dp/0970057431
Worth buying just for the word 'Nudi'.
Time to leave methinks.
"...you will never find a native Australian cockroach in your home - "
That's all very well in Australia, but here in NZ I have a constant stream of large Australia cockroachs parading through the house - big sods, with a yellow stripe down each side - from Western Oz I believe.
If I wanted a visual guide to the contents of the "food" served at McDonalds, I'd just ask to take a tour of the nearest one for free.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go take a shower & scrub off my flesh with a pad of steel wool & a bucket of lye; just the THOUGHT of cockroaches makes my bits itch.
*Cat gagging noises*
to see Roaches? Come to Uganda.
Half a foot of length is not uncommon.
ElReg, pse let us attach photos to our comments.
There´s a company called "Roachman" in Kampala driving around town in cars with supersized roach models on the roof . Cats help a lot. They actually eat them after they had their fun with them. If you smash them their eggs are splad all over the place. So that does not really help. The South Africans have come up with a spray called "Doom!" and boy, it does the job. Can´t buy it in europe because of some chemical warfare barriers. It´s a nerve gas tailored for these bastards and works on mosquitos as well. You better have some drinks outside on the veranda after spraying before you go back inside.
I think cockroaches may be able to travel by TCP! I haven't had one in here for months, then within hours of this story going up, a huge one craws out from behind my computer desk!
(It is now lying dead on my kitchen floor awaiting the great blue dustpan to carry it off to the big bin in the corner).
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