Page 2 - Park News – October, 2020 | The Blackburn Creeklands

Good Spring Rains

The park has benefitted from some good rains recently and the warming weather- our
picture shows the creek rising impressively near the Laurel Grove bridge.

Did you ever want to see inside a Cockroach ?

Cockroaches aren’t always the most fashionable of topics but Lisa, one of our Friends
and photographers, shared an interesting story with us:
We had company yesterday evening while enjoying a drink and nibbles on
our deck.

Not really the sort of company I usually like to keep, however, it was
intriguing. It seems this cockroach had just moulted(?) – can see his
previous personality (empty shell) split and left behind. He/she seemed very
vulnerable – visually obvious and slow (exhausted and toughening up?!).

We left out the bit about her squishing it if it returns looking more like the normal
insect…
Interestingly, the fresh outer layer is semi-transparent – so gives us a kind of X-ray
view of the insect’s internals. We were reluctant to tell Lisa that her new friend looks a
bit legless (unless one leg is folded up underneath) – if so, it seems that the cockroach
may have shared her drink to excess!
We think Lisa’s new pet is a native cockroach of the genus Drymaplaneta. It turns out
that the larger, flat, dark cockroaches are likely to be native fauna so squishing our
friend would have bad karma! The lighter brown more rounded cockroaches are
introduced pest species.

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