La Cucaracha

In your house, maybe?

La Cucaracha

 

By Elton Camp

 

It’s not out in the cold where cockroaches hide

But in warm, moist homes they prefer to reside

If you’ve got them now, but never had ‘em before

They may’ve arrived in a sack from the grocery store

 

Be assured that if you see them when it is still daylight

You’d be horrified if you should check during the night

They will detect you and quickly scurry across the floor

If you see a few, know that there are many dozens more

 

Water’s a weekly need that makes them regularly come out

They live a month without food, or somewhere thereabout

Cut a cockroach’s head off and it won’t be quick to die

If no mouth, it can’t drink water is the basic reason why

 

Don’t be fooled since clean houses may have roaches too

There are more in dirty ones because there’s more to chew

American cockroaches reproduce at a terribly shocking rate

The female need mate only once to get to the starting gate

 

Every two or three days, the female roach will lay an egg sac

And horrors, into each one, about twelve babies she will pack

If, at night, you walk the kitchen floor and hear a crunch

The one that you killed is representative of a larger bunch