Roaches! Obama outrage as Bushes leave White House infested

By DEREK CLONTZ
Your World Report

Editor’s note:  President Barack and first lady Michelle Obama are said to be outraged over the roaches they found in the White House just days after ex-President George bush and wife Laura moved out. At first, they thought they were dealing with ordinary German cockroaches, but entomologists (bug experts) from George Washington University, in Washinton, D.C., quickly identified them as Guatemalan “potty roaches”, as described in our story, below. Potty roaches are hard to kill, but you, like the Obamas, can fight an infestation with the tips you‘ll find in Roaches and Their Control, a free pamphlet you can get by calling any county extension office in the United States. Ask for publication IC-406.

THE NEXT TIME you plop down on a toilet and feel a little something crawling around “down there” don’t chalk it off to your imagination - take a closer look and you might find your bathroom is infested with America’s latest pest peril: Guatemalan potty roaches.

That’s right, potty roaches -  an exotic but fast-breeding insect that is believed to have made its way into the United States through the port of Miami in the mid-1990s and has since spread into many of the finest and cleanest homes in America through sewer lines and toilets.

To make matters worse, potty roaches  - or “throne bugs” as rich folks like to call them to avoid the stigma of  having to fess up to the fact that their homes are infested with “ordinary” insects - have no fear of humans.

In fact, they like people - and will skitter up out of the johnny and all over your “most private and intimate areas in the twinkling of an eye,” experts warn.

“I don’t want to make light of it, but you can bet your bottom dollar that sooner or later these guys are going to catch you with your pants down,” Dr. Doug Pallon, a respected entomologist, told me exclusively.

“Like Africanized ‘killer bees’ and the aggressive, daylight-feeding Asian tiger mosquito, potty roaches aren’t just a scourge in some distant Third World country. They are now in the United States, and they are here to stay.

“Without any natural predators to keep them in check, and with hundreds of millions of miles of sewer lines running to hundreds of millions of toilets in virtually every house in America, they are breeding and migrating unchecked.

 “And once they swarm up out of the sewer lines into your toilet and bathroom, there’s no getting rid of them - you’ll have them as ‘guests’ for good.

“The only way to stop an infestation is to go totally off the grid. Closed systems such as septic tanks and outhouses are ‘clean’ for now, but it won’t be long before the Guatemalan roaches infest them as well.”

Potty roaches are slightly larger than German cockroaches and considerably darker, almost black, in fact, when you hose them off and hold them up to a light.

They also have astoundingly long antennae - three-to-five inches on average - which accounts for the creepy and terribly ill-timed “bottom tickling” that people who live with potty roaches have to get used to in a hurry.

And even though ordinary pesticides and good sanitation might help you control German cockroaches, these tools are powerless against their jungle-tough Guatemalan cousins.

According to Dr. Pallon, potty roaches actually seek out and feed on the residue of household cleansers and pesticides, which means the cleaner you keep your house, the healthier and happier they are.

“All roaches are survivors,” he continued in a telephone interview from his laboratory in North Carolina’s famed Research Triangle.

“All roaches adapt and develop immunities to the deadliest poisons we can throw at them.

“But when it comes to sheer survivability, these Guatemalan roaches - these throne bugs - really are in a class by themselves.

“Even worse, they carry filth and diseases that make ordinary German cockroaches look like freshly-scrubbed surgeons in comparison.

“They are stronger, bigger and tougher than virtually any other roach, having negotiated hundreds or even thousands of miles of sewer lines clogged with the most noxious wastes known to man just to surface in your home.

“To ice the cake, unlike German cockroaches that fear humans and fear light, Guatemalan roaches love humans. And they are what we in the insect business refer to as ‘cunning’ or ‘smart.’

“In our observations through special three-way mirrors, we’ve seen Guatemalan roaches cavorting on a bathroom floor like kindergartners on a playground until they sensed the footsteps of a research assistant moving towards them.

“Almost on cue they stopped dead in their tracks, twitched their antennae and then scurried up under the toilet’s lid and seat, up under the lip of the toilet bowl itself, hidden from view - waiting for my assistant to sit down.

“When she did sit down the roaches swarmed from their hiding places and crawled all over her bottom and thighs. As an observer, I found this behavior fascinating - but my colleague didn’t.

“She still experiences ‘fear and revulsion,’ as she describes it, when she goes into a restroom.

“I would suspect laymen are going to feel the same way although eventually, as in Guatemala, most people will get used to them.”

There isn’t much you can do to keep potty roaches from crawling on you once your home is infested.Through long years of experience, Guatemalans keep a couple of stiff, long-handled brushes beside the toilet.

“They use one to wipe roaches off the toilet lid and seat before they sit down,” said Dr. Pallon. They use the other to brush the roaches off their legs when they get up to keep the bugs from hitching a ride.”

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