The Cockroach

Kevin Halligan

Interesting Facts

• Crushed cockroaches when applied to a wound, can help ease the sting

• Cockroaches have white blood

• A roach can live a week without a head. It dies after a week due to lack of water

• Roaches primarily come out for water, not food

• Cockroaches can live a month without food, but only a week without water

• A cockroach that has just shed it's skin is white and has black eyes. It takes 8 hours to reproduce the skin layer.

• Cockroaches thrive in all conditions and live in the desert as well as the arctic

• Most roaches have the ability to fly, but not all do.

• Fried cockroaches are common snacks in Cambodia, as are spiders and rats

Kevin Halligan

• Born in Toronto, Canada

• In 1964

• Anglophile

• Travelled extensively

• Wrote this poem in Asia

The Poem

• Intense focus on the cockroach –why?

• Tone of the narrator

• Effect on the reader