Chelsea Rachael Cosner

Creative Writing Sample

“Of Cockroaches and Men”

They’re perfect. They’re sleek and mechanical, like a precision timepiece;

indestructible triumphs of nature and evolution. Their beauty goes misunderstood by

those too caught up with clichés and personal prejudices to see their impeccable

sophistication. It is their greatest competitor that shows them the least respect; strange

creatures that have managed to overtake the earth and create such strangely unnatural

colonies. The creatures probe their sickly feelers ever forward, but make up for their

gross dominance in the quaintness and foibles of their behaviors. It is fitting I suppose,

that these two weirdly gorgeous creatures are locked into a continual struggle on a daily

basis. One, simply trying to make a living and feed in the other’s cupboard, is met with

serious objections and attempts to eliminate its entire species by the latter. In this ongoing

battle between (have you guessed yet?) the cockroach and the human, which is the

superior species and who will ultimately win dominance of the planet? And, who

deserves to win?

The Dictoptyera clan and the human are not as different as one thinks. In the way

of lifestyle, cockroaches will live anywhere and eat anything. People will live in North

Dakota and eat at Taco Bell. So, in this respect, the nature of their lifestyles is not as

different as one might think. Both cockroaches and people simply yearn for those lazy

days of eating junk food and watching the kids switch between eating and playing in

mud. What’s so wrong with that? To achieve these dreams however, they must work.

Cockroaches and people both strive to create lasting colonies with complex systems and
thousands of inhabitants. Like people, roaches follow the hive mentality and are pushed

along by the group. When you see a swarm of cockroaches scurry when a light is flicked

on, it is no different than a party, broken up by the appearance of complaining neighbors

or police. Cockroaches can even make group decisions and cooperate to acquire food. It

is not behavior that earns cockroaches such disdain, but a primal fear at seeing a species

just like us, only much older and perfected with age. When it comes to lifestyle and the

ambition to get the best, cockroaches and people are a match. It hardly seems fair we

attempt to exterminate them when they only want what we want.

In the case of beauty, however, the scale is tipped far in advantage of the

cockroach. If you ask an educated person what beauty is, they will say symmetry. The

symmetry of the cockroach is unparalleled. Its lustrous body is a well-oiled machine that

moves rapidly and smoothly, gliding across the floors with the impossibly fine sensory

hairs of its feet, designed to scale whatever obstacle they face. There is an ornate

complexity and perfection of nature in these half robot, half animal looking creatures that

seem to be visual representations of the combination of the two subjects that cover all the

mechanisms for life and explain our planet: biology and physics. Humans, on the other

hand, have bodies relatively new to this planet and not yet perfected by evolution. We

have over extended limbs, that flail and go bad with age, poorly adapted for walking

bipedaly instead of on hands and feet like most other primates. Soft, oddly shapen, prone

bodies with unnatural tufts of hair and exposed breakable skin, make people not only

easy to injure, but bordering on grotesque when compared to other species.

Cockroaches lack a fundamental element that must be conceded to humans. For

all their ethereal beauty, cockroaches lack art. While all cockroaches are imparted with a
grace of movement that allows them to master the art of dance, they do not perform their

nightly ballets to express themselves, but for practical chores. People though, are

imparted with philosophy, art, and music. Our species can cry and love, and express

themselves with too delicate hands and feet and voices. People make up for their lack of

feelers to give them insight into an individual they come across with a much more lasting

outputting of their souls. The inner beauty and fineness of thought they express seem to

make up for most of the physical beauty they lack compared to the elegant sophistication

of the cockroach.

But who will inherit the earth? The cockroaches have been on earth in one form

or another since the Carboniferous period about 300 million years ago. This is

approximately 150 times longer than people have been on earth. It seems cockroaches

have made themselves a steady niche on the planet, and aren’t too worried about the

upstart Homo Sapien species. Should they be? The buggers can survive several days after

losing their heads. If urban legends have any merit, they can survive nuclear holocaust,

too, along with the Twinkie. Maybe the cockroaches should not get so cocky in their

position though. The human race has been able to dominate and change the face of the

planet in a way no species has yet accomplished on a similar scale (besides perhaps the

ant or the Paleozoic prokaryotes that changed the atmosphere, but that is for a different

essay). It is not clear which species will outlast the other, but for now, my money still lies

with the cockroach.