<p>Crofford – Childers Middle School – Connotation & Denotation Cockroach</p><p>Cock roach (kok’ roch’) n. any of an order of nocturnal insects, usually brown with flattened oval bodies, some species of which are household pests inhabiting kitchens, areas around water pipes, etc. (Spanish – cucaracha)</p><p>1. What does the word cockroach mean to you?</p><p>2. Is a cockroach merely an insect, or is it also a household nuisance and a disgusting creature?</p><p>Read the following poems and answer the questions which follow them.</p><p>Roaches</p><p>Last night when I got up yet when sinking asleep to let the dog out I spied or craning at the stars, a cockroach in the bathroom I can feel their light feet crouched flat on the cool probing in my veins, porcelain, their whiskers nibbling delicate the insides of my toes; antennae probing the toothpaste cap and neck arched, and feasting himself on a gob feel their patient scrambling of it in the bowl: up the dark tubes of my throat. I killed him with one unprofessional - Peter Wild blow, scattering arms and legs and half his body in the sink . . . .</p><p>I would have no truck with roaches, crouched like lions in the ledges of sewers their black eyes in the darkness alert for tasty slime, breeding quickly and without design, laboring up drainpipes through filth to the light;</p><p>I read once they are among the most antediluvian of creatures, surviving everything, and in more primitive times thrived to the size of your hand . . . . Crofford – Childers Middle School – Connotation & Denotation from Nursery Rhymes for the Tender-hearted</p><p>Scuttle, scuttle, little roach - Do you linger, little soul, How you run when I approach: Drowsing in your sugar bowl? Up above the pantry shelf Or, abandonment most utter, Hastening to secrete yourself. Shake a shimmy on the butter?</p><p>Most adventurous of vermin, Do you chant your simple tunes How I wish I could determine Swimming in the baby’s prunes? How you spend your hours of ease, Then, when dawn comes, do you slink Perhaps reclining on the cheese. Homeward to the kitchen sink?</p><p>Cook has gone, and all is dark - Timid roach, why be so shy? Then the kitchen is your park; We are brothers, thou and I, In the garbage heap that she leaves. In the midnight, like yourself, Do you browse among the tea leaves? I explore the pantry shelf! -Christopher Morley How delightful to suspect All the places you have trekked: Does your long antenna whisk its Gentle tip across the biscuits?</p><p>Reread the dictionary definition on page 1.</p><p>3. Which of the denotative characteristics of a cockroach do both poets include in their poems?</p><p>4. What characteristics does Wild give his roaches that are not in the dictionary definition?</p><p>5. What additional characteristics does Morley give to roaches?</p><p>In each poem the insect acquires meaning beyond its dictionary definition. Both poets lead us away from a literal view of roaches to a non-literal one.</p><p>6. Which poet succeeds in giving roaches favorable connotations? Explain.</p><p>7. Which poet comes closer to expressing your own feelings about roaches? Explain. Crofford – Childers Middle School – Connotation & Denotation My Experiences with the Little (and not so little) Critters By Elizabeth “Zab” Johnson</p><p>During my year as a Raoul Wallenberg Scholar in Jerusalem, I had the joy of also working in a neurobiology laboratory under the guidance of Professor Jeff Camhi. Jeff’s research animal is, in fact, the cockroach. Cockroaches are a nice experimental animal because 1) their nervous systems are not so complicated, and also not so simple; 2) animal rights activists aren’t marching around outside the lab telling you to free the roaches; and 3) it’s difficult to get emotionally attached to your subject. I must admit that by the end of the year, I was kind of fond of the little guys (and girls). Telling the gender of your cockroaches isn’t too hard, but you can’t smoosh them before-hand. Pick up the cockroach (I’m not kidding) and turn it belly-side up. There are two sets of armor plates; the upper plates are called tergites and the bottom plates are sternites. Females have seven sternites visible, and males have nine. That bit of info ought to impress your friends.</p><p>Somehow, because I worked with cockroaches, my apartment-mates decided that made me the apartment’s honorary expert cockroach killer. “ZAB!!” someone would scream, “There’s a cockroach out here the size of a rat. Kill it . . . and don’t tell us what sex it is.” I’d do the dirty deed and yell, “It was a male!!!” Actually, no cockroach is the size of a rat. The biggest cockroaches live out in the wild (and are never found in your kitchen). I believe the largest cockroach on record is a little less than 4 inches, with a wing-span of 7 inches. But you won’t have to worry about that kind unless you’re in Colombia.</p><p>Nowadays, I’ve left the world of cockroach research and am focusing on vision (something that’s difficult to study in roaches because they have terrible eyesight.) I am, however, known to swiftly grab a newspaper and clobber any roaches I see in my apartment. I am, after all, an expert. </p>