"Roaches."
This refers to the critters.
[LAUGHTER]
"An old decrepit city like London doesn't have any.
They ought to love it there in those smelly, elegant
buildings.
Surely I myself have smuggled some in my luggage but they
obviously don't like the English--
for that alone I should love them.
[LAUGHTER]
They are among the most attractive
and brightest of small creatures though you
have to be prepared for the look of uncomprehending horror
on the faces of out-of-town guests
when a large roach walks across the floor
as you are sipping drinks.
You reach out and swat, and keeping the conversation
going pick up the corpse and drop it into an ashtray feeling
very New Yorky doing it.
After all, you've got to be tough to live here--
the visitor didn't make it.
Roaches also thrive on it here--
they set up lively communes and open boxes of rice, spaghetti,
and matzohs.
You come in to make coffee in the morning
and find a dead one floating in the kettle and dots of road
shit on the dishes, hinting at roachy rebels the night before.
[LAUGHTER]
If you let them alone, they stop running at the sight of you
and whisker about taking a certain interest in whatever
you are doing.
And the little ones, expecting like all babies to be adored,
frolic innocently in the sink, even in daytime when grown up
roaches rest after a night of swarming around the garbage
bag.
The trouble with this approach is they out breed you and take
over, even moving socially right into your bed, which brings up
the question, do they bite?
Some say yes, and if yes, do they carry oriental diseases?
Even though you have tried to accept them
there comes a point when you find your eyes studying labels
of roach killers on supermarket shelves,
decide to try a minimal approach, buy one,
but when you come with spray can aimed
they quickly learn to flee.
The fastest of course live to multiply so they get clever
all the time with kamikaze leaping into space,
or zigzagging away, race into far corners of the apartment
where they drop egg sacs in their last throes
and start ineradicable new colonies.
When you light the oven they come out
and dance on the hot stove top clinging
with the tips of their toes, surviving by quick footwork
until you swat them.
Or if you spray it first you have the smell
of roaches roasting slowly.
[LAUGHTER]
And when you wash them down the drain
without their being certifiably dead
do they crawl up when the coast is clear?
Some even survive the deadliest poisons devised by man
and you have weird white mutations running about.
Dying, they climb the walls, or up your legs,
in agony, making you feel like a dirty rat,
until they fall upside down with frail legs waving in the air.
No more half measures-- it's them or us you
finally realize and decide on nothing
less than total fumigation.
The man comes while you are out and you
return to a silent apartment, blissfully roach-free.
You vacuum up the scattered bodies of the unlucky, pushing
down guilty feelings, lonely feelings,
and congratulate yourself.
You booby, they have only moved over to the neighbor's and she
too is forced to fumigate.
And just when you are on the princess phone crowing
to your friends, back they come, the whole tribe of them,
many gone now due to their trivial lifespan and chemical
adversaries but more numerous than ever
with the new born and all the relatives
from next door in the neighborhood with them,
you standing there outraged but secretly relieved
as they swarm into the kitchen from every crevice,
glad to be home, the eternal innocents,
greeting you joyfully.
[APPLAUSE]