American Cockroach

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Chapter One: Midden Street

Night on Midden Street---"Middens" as it's commonly called by the locals. A misty drizzle is falling and white steam is rising from the manholes. The surface of the black, rain-glossed street and its puddles reflect the blurry, colorful lights of vehicles and traffic signals.

Pedestrians are hustling along the sidewalk in raincoats and hunched under umbrellas, eager to get out of the damp, and impatient motorists on their way home from work are honking and shouting at each other.

It's Garbage Night on Middens---party night for the resident cockroaches, and the mood is festive: The alleys and curbs are filled with six-legged revelers celebrating the bounty.

A trio of cockroaches with their legs around each other is singing a raucous tune on a slice of pepperoni pizza in a pool of light under a street lamp.

Beside them, several inebriated roaches are lying belly up beside a beer can, groaning, their legs twitching feebly in the air. Some of their comrades begin to drag them away into the alley, out of harm's way.

A cockroach jazz band is performing on a fire escape in the alley and the lids of garbage cans down below are covered in exuberant cockroaches, noisily jiving to the lively music. Others are talking and laughing loudly as they feast on morsels of garbage in the dumpsters and on top of trash bags or on the ground.

A fight breaks out in a Chinese takeaway carton. Several roaches scurry out, away from the fracas. Others gather around the carton to watch the brawl---one of several that will inevitably erupt over the course of the night. Whenever a large number of cockroaches get together, there's bound to be some kind of drama eventually: Someone is going to lose a leg---or even their head. Fights are practically a form of entertainment.

The revelry and violence in the alley play out to the soundtrack of frenetic roach band jazz as the moon rises in the night sky. They'll be dancing and singing, feasting and fighting and chasing mates until first daylight: Just another Wednesday night in Roachtown.

A young cockroach named Rochelle is feeding on a piece of fried chicken with several other juveniles in the alley, taking in the spectacle. This is her first Garbage Night and her formal introduction to cockroach society and culture.

Like other young roaches, she keeps a low profile, away from the adults. Cockroaches don't generally cannibalize when there's plenty of food, but they're not above doing it. It's better to play it safe than to be too trusting and risk becoming someone's meal for it.

One of the cardinal rules of cockroach society is this: Don't be too trusting of other cockroaches.

There is a shriek from the direction of a baked bean can on the alley floor. "Tyrell! No!"

Rochelle looks up with a startled gasp at the sound. She sees a female cockroach bowed over the headless body of another cockroach, hugging his severed head in two of her legs.

"Why?" wails the female roach loudly as some other cockroaches try to console her. She holds the head of her decapitated beau up in her legs, regarding it regretfully. "No!" she cries. "Tyrell!"

"It's okay, baby," Tyrell's head replies hoarsely, with sadness in his voice. "We had good times together. Remember me the way I was. Not---like this..."

His girlfriend sobs violently.

"Ain't that a shame," a female cockroach mutters to her companion as the two of them crawl past the chicken wing where Rochelle and the other young cockroaches are feeding. "Lost his head over some beans. All the food on this street and they're fighting over a few baked beans. Those thugs just wanted to start something with him."

"Just some fools with something to prove," her friend replies. "They're always making trouble."

"Mm-mm-mm," clucks the other female, shaking her head.

Rochelle watches the two of them pass by. She turns back toward the drama at the bean can, where a small crowd of cockroaches has formed around the decapitated cockroach and his hysterical girlfriend out of morbid interest---as they do whenever someone gets killed---with murmurs of shallow condemnation and condolence that have practically become a cultural ritual, like a kind of macabre theatre.

It'll happen again tomorrow night most likely, and there will be more lamentations and denunciations of the foolishness and the violence, but nothing will change.

Thunder rumbles and the misting drizzle suddenly turns to rain. Out on the street, the sound of the garbage truck arriving signals the end of the party. The cockroaches begin to scuttle for shelter, pouring out of the garbage cans and dumpsters and garbage bags. On the fire escape above the alleyway, the jazz band packs up for the night.

The rain quickly intensifies into a heavy downpour, creating torrents along the curbs. Rochelle's little legs aren't fast or strong enough to carry her to safety before the deluge breaks: She's caught in the rising water in the alley and swept away by the current.

Chapter Two: The Garden

The rosy morning sun rises to cheerful birdsong on a garden bejeweled with crystal raindrops. A tiny cockroach is lying motionless on its back on the brick walk with its legs folded across its body, as if dead---an easy snack for a foraging sparrow...

But as the sun rises, warming her chilled chitin with its rays, Rochelle slowly revives and regains her senses. She flails her tiny legs and flutters her wings and manages to flip herself over. She scurries for cover under the door of a shed, just a moment before a blue jay swoops down on the place where she lay.

Rochelle recovers her breath in the musty darkness of the shed. She spends some time cleaning herself and resting before her curiosity entices her to venture out into the garden.
It is a strange new world to the cockroach: There are fragrant rose bushes and flowers of various kinds blooming all around her. There is a babbling fountain and several trees and shepherd's hooks with bird and squirrel feeders hanging from them. There is a brick patio with outdoor furniture and a barbeque grill on it. And there is a vegetable garden---leafy and full and ripening with vegetables and fruit: Kale and tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, cucumbers, sweet peas, and strawberries.

Rochelle has never seen anything like it before. She wanders through the garden in awe, marveling at her surroundings, as songbirds chirp and bumblebees buzz and sparkling droplets of yesterday's rain spill from the plants around her.

Naturally, being a cockroach, she's drawn to the vegetable garden with its fragrant produce glistening with raindrops.

There are a number of insects there, most of which Rochelle has never encountered before. A spider is repairing her web on the garden's white picket fence. Earthworms are wriggling across the wet soil---flushed from the earth by the rain and hastening to burrow back underground before the birds find them.

Rochelle climbs a fuzzy cherry tomato plant. She finds it occupied by several ladybugs, busily hunting succulent aphids. Rochelle herself is too big to be concerned about the ladybugs harming her. She's intrigued by them---but even more interested in the luscious fruit of the tomato plant.

When the ladybugs see Rochelle, they panic and begin to sound an alarm. "Mantis! Mantis!" they cry, scurrying away from her. Some of them take flight to other plants.

"Wait!" Rochelle cries after them. "I'm not a mantis; I'm a cockroach!"

One of the ladybugs buzzing past her in flight turns back to take a second look at her. He lights on a tomato leaf above her. "What are you doing here?" he asks her with an English accent, in a rather disapproving tone. "You don't belong here in the garden."

Another ladybug flies over to join him. He too looks down at Rochelle. "What sort of insect is that?" he murmurs to his fellow.

"It's a Periplaneta americana," replies the first.

"A what?" asks the second.

"A cockroach," replies the first disdainfully. "A common household P-E-S-T."

"Pest?" Rochelle whispers to herself, baffled and slightly offended to be referred to in such a derogatory manner.

"What on earth is it doing here?"

"I have no idea. We certainly don't need any roaches here in the garden." The first ladybug turns back to Rochelle. "Now see here, cockroach," he says, "I think you'd better go back to wherever you came from. This garden is for productive insects, not pests."

"I'm not a pest," Rochelle replies. "I just want to enjoy the fruits of the garden like you."

"As do the weevils and the Japanese beetles and the cabbage moths," retorts the ladybug sarcastically. "This garden is for useful, working creatures who contribute something to the ecosystem, not for those who destroy it."

"I'm productive," Rochelle replies defensively. "Sort of---I guess..." The ladybug and his companion smirk and chuckle. Rochelle frowns.

"Don't be silly," says the ladybug. "Everyone knows that cockroaches are useless vermin. They only contribute to their own welfare, not anyone else's. They merely destroy and foul the good things of the world and take advantage of others' hard work and resources."

"That's not true," Rochelle protests indignantly. "We do contribute."

"In what way?" asks the ladybug.

"Well..." Rochell replies, thinking hard. "We---we---um---uh..." She folds her legs and frowns as the ladybugs chuckle smugly. "Well---I have just as much right to be here as anyone else," she says. "It's a free world."

"Typical pest logic," the ladybug smirks. "Only thinking of your own benefit."

He gestures at the garden with one of his legs."Take a look around you, cockroach, at this beautiful eden we noble and productive insects call home. Everyone here contributes whatever he does to make this place what it is. The earthworms, for example, are simple folk, but they till the soil and fertilize it with their nutrient-rich castings."

Rochelle looks down at the soil beneath the tomato plant and sees an earthworm steadily burrowing down into the moist black earth.

"The spiders catch flying pests and keep the population numbers in check," continues the ladybug.

Rochelle looks toward the white picket fence where the spider is taking a break from repairing and reinforcing her web to clean her slender and delicate legs, humming softly to herself.

"The butterflies and the bees pollinate the flowers..."

Rochelle looks up and sees a pair of butterflies cavorting with one another in the air.

"And we ladybugs prey upon the aphids that destroy the plants. Gardeners love us." He looks back at Rochelle. "Now consider yourself," he says. "You contribute nothing beneficial to this ecosystem. We don't need insects of your kind here in the garden."

"Or anywhere..." his fellow ladybug murmurs under his breath as he munches on an aphid.

"Go back to the rubbish bin and the sewer with the others of your kind," says the first ladybug. "That's where you belong, cockroach; not here."

He buzzes away, leaving Rochelle alone to ponder his disparaging criticism of her species with wounded feelings. She hangs her head. Downcast, she slowly climbs back down the tomato plant.

"Are we really pests?" she thinks to herself as she trudges through the cheerful, sunny garden, looking around her at the busy garden insects. Some of them eye her strangely as she passes, no doubt wondering what she is and what she is doing there. "Surely we must be good for something. I mean, we might not be the most productive insects in the world, but we're good at what we do. We're survivors and opportunists."

"Typical pest logic," she hears the ladybug's condescending English accent echoing in her mind.

The more Rochelle ponders, crawling through the pleasant garden and observing its insect population about their business, the more unhappy she becomes. Try as she might, she can't think of a single benefit that a cockroach would offer the garden---or any place---or why anyone would want one around, although she can think of plenty of reasons why she would like to live in the garden.

"The ladybug was right," she says to herself sadly at last. "I don't belong here. I don't contribute anything; I'm just a taker. A..." She can't bring herself to say the word "pest".

Dejected and filled with self-contempt, Rochelle crawls out from under the white picket garden fence and scurries back toward the street leading into the city and to the world of cockroaches.

Chapter Three: A Self-Hating Roach

It's afternoon when Rochelle enters her neighborhood, in an alley behind a pizza shop. It's dark and dotted with rain puddles, and littered with bits of trash. The air is dank and steamy and smells of garbage and pizza. Cockroaches are lounging along the alley walls and in the shadows behind the dumpsters and garbage cans, waiting for evening to fall.

Rochelle crawls into a crevice in the wall of the pizza shop. She emerges under one of the ovens in the kitchen, where several other cockroaches, adults and juveniles, are lounging around a bait trap, snacking on pizza crumbs and playing cards.

She approaches a male cockroach who is leaning against the bait trap eating a shred of mozzarella cheese. "Can I ask you something?" she says to him.

The adult cockroach crams the rest of the cheese into his mouthparts and belches. "Sure, shorty," he replies, nibbling his legs and antennae clean.

"What makes cockroaches special?" Rochell asks him.

"What do you mean?" asks the other cockroach.

"I mean, what are our strengths and virtues as insects?" Rochelle explains. "What makes us great as a species?"

"Well," the other cockroach replies, after a moment's consideration, "we have an ancient history. We've been around practically since time began. And we've spread all over the world, and have managed to adapt wherever we've gone."

"That's right," another cockroach chimes, smiling proudly. "We're one of the most successful species on this planet."

"We're really fast," says another. "Turn on the light and whoosh, we're outta sight!"

"We're some of the hardiest creatures in the world too," says the first cockroach. "Even more than rats. That's saying something."

"But we don't do anything," Rochelle argues. "We don't contribute anything positive to the world. We just take from it."

The other cockroaches look at each other, surprised.

"We take care of ourselves and our own kind," says the other cockroach.

"But we attack and eat each other," Rochelle says.

"So does practically every other creature on the planet sometimes," another cockroach replies. "We do what we have to do to survive. Nobody's perfect. Just look at the mantids: They eat each other all the time."

"But mantises hunt other insects and keep their populations down, like spiders do," Rochelle points out. "People like them. Nobody likes us. We don't have any purpose."

"Says who?" says the first cockroach indignantly.

"It's true," Rochelle says. "We're just opportunistic parasites. We don't contribute anything useful to the world. We just live for ourselves. And we don't have any skills except for surviving. But what accomplishment is it to survive when you're a nuisance to everyone and don't do anything good in the world?

"We don't have any respect. Nobody wants us around. They run from us, make fun of us, and do everything they can to exterminate us and keep us away."

"That's because they're prejudiced," says the other cockroach. "They don't understand us, and they're jealous of our adaptability and our indomitability, so they hate us and try to get rid of us. We're more clever than they are, and we do our own thing. Humans only appreciate insects that they can control and that benefit them."

"You don't think our bad reputation is deserved?" Rochelle asks him. "We ruin their food and dirty up their houses, and we don't give them anything in return for what we take from them. You don't think they have a reason to hate us?"

"Every creature has its good side and its bad side," the other roach replies defensively, folding his legs. "People choose to only focus on the bad side of cockroaches. They don't appreciate our admirable qualities."

"Such as?" Rochelle asks skeptically.

"Such as the things I've already mentioned," the other roach replies. "Don't be so critical of us. We're good at what we do. We don't owe anybody anything. What do humans do for us?"

"Provide us with shelter and warmth and food," Rochelle replies.

"Nah, we take those things from them," says the other cockroach. "They don't give us nothin'--- except poison." He gestures contemptuously at the bait trap with two of his legs. "We're not any different than they are, really: We look out for ourselves, solve problems, adapt to changes, take advantage of favorable conditions and opportunities, and overcome adversity and obstacles, just like they do. When people do those things, they praise themselves for it, but when we do it, we're "pests"."

"Mm-hmm; that's right," says another cockroach. The others murmur in agreement.

"But why should we be dependent on human beings to give us their things?" Rochelle asks. "Why can't we be like the bees, or the ladybugs, or the spiders: Hardworking, self-sufficient, and cooperative?"

The first cockroach snorts. "Humans kill them too when it suits them," he says. "Those other insects might think they're superior to us---and maybe they're better liked in general---but if they get into the house, they get the shoe and the spray can just like us: "Friend" today, pulp tomorrow. Us roaches are just smart enough not to care whether we're liked or not. We care about us, and we do what we need to do to take care of us. That's why there's more of us than there are of other kinds of those so-called "good" insects."

"You know what your problem is, youngin'?" an older female cockroach says to Rochelle. "You're too concerned with what others think about you instead of just accepting and being proud of what you are."

"That's right!" chimes another cockroach.

"Mm-hmm," another agrees. "She's a self-hating roach."

"I don't want to be a pest," Rochelle mutters, folding her legs. "I want to be a productive part of the ecosystem."

The other cockroaches shake their heads at her pityingly. Some of them chuckle.

Disgusted, Rochelle crawls back through the crevice and up into the wall. She can hear the muffled voices of the others talking and laughing about her as she climbs. "Simple-minded roaches," she mutters to herself.

A gentle breeze is blowing when Rochelle emerges from the wall onto a fire escape above the alleyway. She perches on the platform's edge, in-between two of the bars of the railing, and gazes out on the neighborhood with her antennae twitching slowly in the garbage-and-pizza-scented breeze, remembering the dreamy garden with the white picket fence.

"There must be some way out of here," she says to herself. "Just because I'm a cockroach doesn't mean I have to live like a typical one. I can do the same things that other insects do. I don't have to live my life as a pest."

That night, as a full moon shines down on the alleys of Midden Street and the cockroaches come out to forage and socialize, Rochelle leaves Roachtown for good, passing unnoticed through the clusters of her fellow cockroaches as they chat and laugh boisterously around the garbage cans and dumpsters.

She doesn't know where she's going, or what will happen to her once she gets there; all she can think about is getting far away from the alley and vulgar cockroach culture and creating a new life for herself somewhere else---somewhere where she'll be more than just another despised pest.

She travels all night, through alleyways and slumbering neighborhoods of old, dilapidated rowhouses, up out of the city and into the quiet, peaceful suburbs beyond it. The song of the crickets serenades her as she crawls down the sidewalk, past square lawns of neatly cut grass glistening with dew and the shadows of houses with porches. The cool night air, fragrant with the smell of moist earth and cut grass, is sweet and refreshing.

At last, after traveling for several miles, the exhausted little cockroach crawls through a chain-link fence covered with morning glories into a yard with a crab apple tree in the midst of it. The smell of fermenting crab apples at the roots of the tree draws her to it. She's famished.

A party of slugs is dining on the decomposing fruit in the moonlight. Their silvery slime trails streak the grass all around the tree like web of tinsel. The mildly inebriated gastropods turn their optical tentacles in Rochelle's direction lethargically as she crawls through their midst, but say nothing. Slow of movement as well as of mind---all the more so when intoxicated by fermented fruit juice, which they love---slugs and snails are typically creatures of few words and simple conversation---the bovines of the bug world.

Rochelle settles on a rotting crab apple among the slurping, smacking slugs and begins to feed hungrily.

This is the perfect place: There is food, and a hollow in the trunk of the tree for shelter. She can live a peaceful and comfortable life here, without being a nuisance to anyone.

Chapter Four: An Insect Of The Yard

Rochelle settles in the suburban yard, taking up residence in the pleasantly dark and musty hollow of the crab apple tree. She feeds on the fallen apples and on the detritus in the hollow, where she spends the day, hiding from the sunlight and the predatory creatures that hunt in it.

She shares her new home with several indifferent woodlice, a few amiable earwigs, and one crotchety centipede (who she avoids).

Life is good and simple here. There is much less drama, and no threat of sprays, shoes, or poisoned bait. The resident insects coexist peacefully for the most part, and there's plenty of food for everyone.

Gradually, Rochelle acclimates to her new world---true to the adaptability of her species---and she comes to appreciate its amenities and natural ambience, and its pace and way of life. She appreciates the sweet dew on the grass and the fragrance of wet earth and plants after the rain, the song of the birds, and the natural foods provided by the earth---rather than human leftovers---although she does miss the taste of fried chicken and pizza sauce.

Instead of loud jazz music and traffic sounds at night, there are windchimes and crickets; instead of rats, squirrels and chipmunks. Instead of concrete, there is grass and earth. Instead of brick, plaster, and pressure treated lumber, there is natural wood.

Week by week, Rochelle grows and molts. Six months after her arrival and settlement in the yard, she has matured into a full grown adult cockroach and become an assimilated insect of the yard, with the knowledge and skills to live successfully in the natural world.

But despite her pride and pleasure in her successful adaptation, and being surrounded by insects of different kinds, Rochelle's happiness is overshadowed by a growing sense of profound loneliness. She doesn't miss the disreputable and stagnant culture she fled, but she misses her own kind. By nature a communal insect, she can't really relate to the other insects as she would to another cockroach. She envies the friendly and amorous interactions of the other insects with their species, longing for the same with her own.

"If only there were more like me," she sighs to herself as she sits on a dandelion under the moonlight one warm summer night, gazing up at the fireflies and the exploding fireworks of the humans' celebration.

I could go back, she thinks to herself with a little surge of optimistic excitement, find some other progressive minds and free thinkers among them, and persuade them to leave like I've done---to give up being pests and adopt a new lifestyle as insects of nature.

But... Her spirits sink again as reality sets in. They wouldn't listen to me. They'd call me a siddity, self-hating cockroach. They all think alike.

She sighs wistfully again.

"Why the long face, cockroach?" a firefly asks her as he flies past the dandelion where Rochelle is sitting, on his way to the firefly social in the air.

"It's nothing," Rochelle replies morosely. "You wouldn't understand."

"Why wouldn't I?" asks the beetle, lighting on a nearby blade of grass.

"It's personal," Rochelle replies.

"Try me," says the firefly. "You might be surprised."

Rochelle looks at him hesitantly. The firefly waits. "I left where I come from to get away from that lifestyle," she says. "I didn't want to live the life of a typical cockroach, as a pest that nobody wants around, you know---good for nothing; just taking from the world and destroying things, never contributing anything positive to it. I wanted to live with dignity, and to be a productive part of the ecosystem."

"That's very socially responsible of you," says the firefly.

"But now I'm alone," Rochelle says regretfully. "There aren't any other cockroaches around here. I'm the only one."

"I'm sure there are plenty of them in the houses," says the firefly. "You just have to look for them."

"That's just it," Rochelle says with sigh. "Domestic roaches all think alike---like typical cockroaches. They don't know any different way to live, and most of them are content to do what they've always done. They don't mind being pests; or, if they do, they pretend that they don't. They blame the humans for disliking us and for trying to exterminate us, but they never look at their own behavior that makes them undesirable. I just can't stand being around cockroaches like that. They're losers. I'm embarrassed to be related to them."

"Hmm. I see your point," the firefly says. "Well, you are a unique cockroach, there's no doubt about that. But don't be so quick to call things hopeless; there's always hope." He flashes the light in his abdomen for emphasis with an encouraging smile.

"I don't see any," Rochelle murmurs glumly.

"Alright," says the firefly. "Let me see what I can do about it. Be back in a bit." He takes off into the night sky, joining the host of other flashing fireflies, and disappears.

Chapter Five: Chauncey

Three yards down from Rochelle's yard, the people of the house have had a cookout. There is a large black garbage bag full of hastily cleared disposable picnicware and food waste sitting beside the picnic table, as well as some bits and pieces of food on the table and on the grass below. And---there are cockroaches; several of them, happily feasting on the leftovers.
The firefly settles on the leaf of a tree to watch them.

"Man, you gotta try this potato salad," one cockroach calls to another as he munches on a dollop of spilled potato salad on the bench of the picnic table. "This mayonnaise is boss!"

"If I eat any more my abdomen is gonna explode," the other cockroach replies with a loud belch from a watermelon rind on the grass below.

Over by some hydrangea bushes, away from the rowdy party at the picnic table, the firefly notices a solitary cockroach in the midst of a company of crickets. The crickets are chirping, rubbing their wings together, and the cockroach is playing a double bass. It's a mellow, slightly wistful tune, and catchy---a unique mixture of jazz and classical music sounds.

"Does that piece have a name?" the firefly asks when they finish, flying down from the leaf and landing on a blade of grass beside the bass player.

""Blattodea, Blattidae"," the cockroach replies.

"Hey, Chauncey!" shouts one of the cockroaches from the picnic table. "What are you doing over there with those crickets?" He laughs loudly. "Ol' Chauncey's tryin' to be a cricket," he jokes to some of the other cockroaches with him. They laugh. "Man, those crickets don't want nothin' to do with you. Get your fool cockroach self back over here and play us some real jazz!"

"That's what I'm talkin' about!" another cockroach says.

"I'll play what I want with whomever I want," Chauncey replies nonchalantly. "Go back to your potato salad." He turns back to the crickets. "Alright boys, let's play another. What do you know?"

The firefly immediately perceives the bass player to be a cockroach of a different sort. He has an air of dignified composure about him---a suaveness, and understated wit---and seems indifferent to the opinions of his fellow cockroaches. As he watches and listens to the amateur group playing and having a good time together, the firefly recognizes that the cockroach bassist in the derby cap has qualities that the female cockroach would appreciate, and he decides to invite him to meet her.

"Say, cockroach," he says to Chauncey when the group finishes their tune, "I have a proposition for you."

Chauncey looks intrigued. "What's that, friend?" he asks.

"There's a she-roach a few yards up," the firefly replies. "She lives by herself in the yard; she's the only cockroach there. She's pretty lonely. She's looking for a likeminded cockroach for company, someone unconventional---sophisticated. I think you might fit the bill. I can take you to her if you're interested."

"I'm interested," Chauncey replies, putting his bass in its case. He glances back at the raucous cockroach party at the picnic table where a fight has broken out at a corncob on the grass. Chauncey frowns. "Let's go," he says to the firefly. He shakes legs with the crickets.

"Nice playing with you fellas," he says. "I'll see you around."

"You too," the crickets reply. "Look us up whenever you want to play."

"Likewise," Chauncey says. He tips his cap. Hefting his bass with two of his legs, he follows after the firefly.

"Hey, Chauncey, where you goin'?" a cockroach shouts after him from the picnic table.

"None of your business," Chauncey replies cooly, stepping through the chainlink fence into the next yard.

The firefly leads him through the grass with his abdominal beacon, pausing now and then on blades of grass for the cockroach to catch up and catch his breath. They travel through two yards with Chauncey lugging his bass along. He's exhausted, but he keeps going determinedly.

When they finally reach the fence of Rochelle's yard, the firefly flies to the dandelion where he left her. Rochelle is starting to climb down the weed to go home, tired of waiting for the firefly's return. She's surprised when he buzzes over to her.

"I'm back," he says. "I found you a cockroach I think you might be interested in. He's over by the fence. I'll bring him over."

Rochelle waits on the stem of the dandelion as the firefly returns to Chauncey. She's nervous about meeting another cockroach after all this time and doubtful as to whether he'll be what she's looking for. She doesn't really believe that any cockroach like herself exists. "Don't get your hopes up," she cautions herself, preparing for disappointment.

After a time, the grass rustles in front of her and a cockroach in a derby cap emerges, carrying a large case for a musical instrument of some kind. The firefly, who has been leading him, settles on a blade of grass to watch the meeting.

Chauncey, breathing hard from his trek and haul, sets down his bass and tips his cap to Rochelle with a polite nod of greeting. "Good evening," he says to her, mildly winded.

Rochelle smirks slightly with skepticism. "Good evening," she replies quietly.

"I'm Chauncey," says the cockroach gent, stepping over to the dandelion where Rochelle is clinging.

"Rochelle," Rochelle replies.

The two of them gaze at each other for a moment, analyzing each other with antennae twitching, turning their heads this way and that. Slowly, Rochelle begins to climb down the dandelion to meet him.

"The firefly tells me you live all alone in this yard," Chauncey says, looking around.

"It's true," Rochelle replies sadly, lowering her eyes.

"Do you mind my asking why?" Chauncey asks.

Rochelle glances up at him. "How much time have you got for an answer?" she asks him.

"As much time as it takes," Chauncey replies.

The two of them sit down on the case of Chauncey's bass and Rochelle begins to relate her story to him. Chauncey listens thoughtfully and sympathetically, without criticism or ridicule.

The crickets chirp and the fireflies blink in the yard around them as the two cockroaches talk under the summer stars.

Rochelle is surprised and relieved to find in Chauncey the bassist someone who understands her and who shares her atypical perspective on things. She had doubted that she would ever meet another cockroach who thought like herself, and had feared that, beneath his outward refinement and affable charm, Chauncey would prove to be just like the majority---hopelessly entrenched in the mentality of a self-righteous pest. Now, like a precious morsel of a favorite food secretly discovered, she's desperate to have him for herself.

When she has finished telling him her story and all her mind, she turns to him. "Well," she ventures anxiously, "what do think about living here as a yard insect instead of as a house roach?"

"Well," Chauncey replies with a bit of a sigh, scratching his head under his derby, "I'll miss the barbecued chicken." He looks at Rochelle and smiles a little and she smiles back. "But there's more to life than chicken, isn't there?"

Rochelle offers him two of her legs and Chauncey takes them in his own. Serenaded by the nocturn of the crickets, the two of them gaze up at the stars and the fireflies together as the darkness of the night gradually fades into the soft blue-gray of predawn.

"My work here is done," the firefly says to himself with a little smile of satisfaction. He flutters his wings and flies away into the morning.

Chapter Six: Upward and Onward

Rochelle and Chauncey take up residence together in the cozy hollow of the crab apple tree in the yard. Chauncey takes it upon himself to evict the ill-tempered centipede, much to the appreciation of all.

He starts an orchestral jazz ensemble with some of the local crickets, which becomes very popular: Chauncey and the Crickets. They play concerts and parties all over the neighborhood.

Eventually, he opens a nightclub in the frame of an old car in one of the backyards of the neighborhood, which he calls The Jalopy Club---before long the hottest nightspot in town, for cockroaches, crickets and earwigs alike.

He and Rochelle enjoy a happy, laid-back life together as yard insects, with a social circle of broad-minded insects like themselves, including a few cockroaches---mostly musicians.

They still enjoy garbage from outdoor trash cans and garbage bags, but they never trespass into houses; and they only eat garden produce that has fallen or begun to rot---nothing fresh on the vine.

They make themselves useful, as consumers of waste, rather than being destroyers, polluters, and thieves of food and produce after the habit of their species. By their conscientiousness, they are able to rise above the station and notorious reputation of pests and earn an honorable reputation as benevolent and benign members of the backyard ecosystem and the insect community, defiantly redefining for themselves what it means to be a cockroach.

The two of them have several hundred offspring together, in whom they instill their unconventional values and philosophy of life. Some of them go on to be musicians like Chauncey; others assume a quiet, ordinary existence as unobtrusive yard and garden insects, cleaning up the waste of flora and fauna and feeding on the refuse of humankind.

And so our story ends, on a hot, humid summer's eve with a potato chip moon, at the Jalopy Club, where Chauncey and his band are performing for a diverse crowd of insects. A few dozen fireflies on the side the car form a flashing lighted sign for the establishment. The melodic strains of mellow orchestral jazz music drift out of the windows of the jalopy onto the still night air.

Chauncey is in the spotlight on stage, playing his bass and singing in a smooth, crisp tenor voice, accompanied by his cricket and cockroach band, as the audience, seated around tables with white linen tablecloths, sways and taps its legs to the music---Rochelle among them, in the front row, wearing a smile and sweet eyes for Chauncey.

"I'll never be a butterfly with wings like painted glass;
kissin' flowers, sippin' nectar---
admired and beloved;
I'm not the kind of insect you draw portraits of...
Blattodea, Blattidae.

"I'll never be a honeybee with vomit you can eat;
livin' the hive-life;
a worker, or a drone.
Hive-mindedness ain't worth not being all alone...
Blattodea, Blattidae.

"Don't need no sunshine in the afternoon:
I'm rollin' and strollin' by the light of the moon.
I'm congregatin' where it's damp and hot---
whether you see me or not...

"I'll never be a ladybird, in polka-dotted tails,
eating the aphids on your garden plant.
You wouldn't want to have me sittin' in your hand...
Blattodea, Blattidae."

A portly cockroach plays a solo on a muted trumpet as the audience sways and taps its legs to the beat.

Chauncey resumes his singing.

"I'm just a simple cock-a-roach; that's all I'll ever be,
but that don't mean that I'm just another pest:
I choose to roach my own way, and I do it best...
Blattodea, Blattidae.

"Don't reprimand me 'cause I break the mold;
this cockroach is sittin' on top of the world.
I ain't a menace to society:
I'm diggin' my dignity.

"So don't be hatin' on my joi de vivre;
don't need no propers from the riffraff crowd.
This roach-above-reproach is livin' free and proud...
Blattodea, Blattidea...
Blattodea---Blattidae!"

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