urbpan | Okay, then, cockroaches.

I knew from my readings that Easter Island had some cockroaches. While the McLaughlin book says that they have "found a niche," implying later introduction to the island, it's perfectly conceivable that they arrived before any people were there. They could have easily arrived along with the first plant material to float onto the barren volcanic rock. Roaches are most well-known for living alongside people, but they did without human company for 300 million years. But the Rapanui word for the insect is "koka," derived from the Spanish cucaracha, and Spanish wasn't a main influence until the late 19th Century--hinting that the cockroach spread to Easter Island in historic time.

I was a little disappointed when I didn't find any cockroaches in my hotel room. In fact, the only trace of insects in the room was a dead cricket in the bathroom light fixture. Over the course of our time there, I saw flies (lesser house flies and green bottle flies), moths (mostly small white or brown ones), dragonflies (how do you suppose they got there?!), a lacewing that landed on Dale's hat in the middle of a rainstorm on Rano Raraku, a few small beetles and some very small ants. Non-insect bugs included the spiders I've posted about before, millipedes, and at least two kinds of isopods: the pillbug kind, and the non-pillbug kind. The guidebook says there are a hundred species of insects, but I'd love to do a study to find out for sure. I'm sure that the number increases every year, with shipments of produce from Chile and Tahiti arriving by air weekly.

My father and I were walking back to the hotel on our last night there, taking the back road along the ocean. My father has trouble seeing, especially in low light, and the road was fraught with hazards. I used my flashlight to look ahead for potholes, loose stones, and other dangers. Soon enough, I found that there were creatures scurrying from my flashlight beam!

Once I determined that they were cockroaches, I picked one up, and found that it was a kind totally unknown to me.

All other roaches I've seen are more or less oval shaped. These guys were wider at the back, almost like the silhouette of a pear. They were slower than many roaches I've handled, and not as soft and slippery.

Soon I found another kind of roach. These were bigger, more typically-shaped, and faster. They looked a lot like American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana or "palmetto bugs") but their pronotum (that shield behind their head) had bolder, high-contrast markings. They were hard to photograph, too.

Sometimes I really wish I were a real entomologist, and could have an excuse for catching and identifying insects! (I almost said "make a living doing it" but probably