The bug, buzzing and trapped on its back, caught my eye just as I was about to turn out the living room light. I didn’t recognize the inch-long insect, but it looked suspiciously like a cockroach. I was baffled;  we don’t have roaches (or at least not many) in Santa Fe.

Dave and I  relocate spiders and stinkbugs outside, if possible, but since I wanted to know more about this one I picked it up  with a tissue and put it in a baggie in the freezer.   Ollie, a local bug collector, had told me this trick to preserve a specimen–at the time, I hoped I would never have occasion to use it.

Photo by P. Nixon

A few months ago when I was writing about cockroaches I called an exterminator to answer my questions, but since I wanted help identifying this bug I decided to pay a visit to the Harrell House of Natural Oddities in the DeVargas Mall.  The shop is filled with dinosaur models, butterfly t-shirts, and mounted spiders.  In back is a  bug museum.

Last week when Dave and I had a few errands at the mall, I took the roach out of the freezer and found it in perfect condition.  We stopped in the Harrell House and talked to Thomas, a high school student.  Fascinated with the blue-tongued skink in a glass case behind the counter, it was a while before we got around to showing Thomas the bug, but he didn’t know what kind of cockroach it was either.  I gave him the bug (and told him I didn’t want it back) along with a note for Wade, the shop’s owner.

By the time we got home, Wade had left a message identifying the creature as a Pennsylvania wood cockroach, not native to the West.  We decided it must have hitchhiked to Santa Fe, but on what?  Wade mentioned landscaping mulch, but I suspected a book that I had just received in the mail from a used bookstore, until I realized it came from Nevada.

Photo By: P. Nixon

I was still thinking about it a couple of days later when this pile of latillas (fenceposts) on our back patio caught my eye.  Dave and I had recently purchased them from a local company and loaded them into our Explorer–they had come from Arkansas.  .

I think that solves the mystery and I am happy to report that we haven’t seen any more cockroaches, outside or inside.