Word: roache
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Colonel Crowe's fondness for what he calls his "Baptist Cocktail" has made him also feared by his friends. His recipe: "Go into the kitchen, get a tall glass, and put into it everything you can reach without taking more than three steps." If there is any roach powder, ant paste or canned heat within three steps, Jim is likely to mix a spot or two with the gin, brandy, whiskey and tabasco sauce. But he apparently thrives on such concoctions. At San Diego a doctor told him: "Colonel, you owe your life to a strong constitution and good...
...surest weapon against the roach is extreme temperature. The insect thrives between 70 and 80° Fahrenheit, but can be killed by dry air at 86°, becomes numb at 35°, dies at 23°. It is also very susceptible, when it can be reached, to poison. In Manhattan the most common varieties of roach are the American (an inch and a half long) and the German (half as large) ; the German is locally known as the "Croton bug" because it first invaded the city in large numbers when holes were cut in walls for water pipes...
...bedbug is harder to poison. Unlike the roach, it is an epicure: it feeds on human blood. A loathsome, wingless insect, it is light brown and flat before feeding, swells up and turns mahogany afterward. Chief difficulty in fighting bedbugs : housewives hate to admit their presence. Though the common bedbug hurts little except family pride, a relative known as the "kissing bug" transmits Chagas' disease (a deadly parasitic disease originating in Brazil) to human beings. A Lethane spray is the most effective bedbug poison...
...booze in my bag, when I bumps into this guy. He's got a flashy blue uniform on, and loads of gold braid, so I pick myself up and snap to attention, who knows, it might be an admiral. Only it's not an admiral, it's Al Roach, the Yard Cop. "They're mobilizing us," he says. "Gave us uniforms for the first time in 308 years. Don't ask me why, maybe it's protective concealment with all these Navy men in the Yard." It's all very fine, all Colonel Apted ever had man a water piston...
...light jag. The smoker is then said to be "high" or "floating." When he has smoked a reefer down to a half-inch butt, he carefully conserves it in an empty match box. In this condition it is known, in Mexican, as a chicharra, or in English, as a "roach...