LA Times Monday, May 11, 1998
Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer
Open a Roach Motel and Win! Cockroach bounty
hunters are scurrying around Tucson this week,
looking for specially marked insect with a $50,000
price on its head. The fugitive roach is part
of a publicity stunt by Arizona Pest Control,
which glued bar codes to the backs of 100 cockroaches
and released them at various spots around the
city. The reward for hauling in one of the bugs--dead
or alive--is $100, unless it's the grand-prize
roach, which is worth $50,000.
The insect dragnet is Arizona Pest Control's
third cockroach contest. In previous years, the
exterminator company has sponsored competitions
for the largest bug, which was dubbed Arnold Roachnegger,
and the fastest, which was clocked at 2.1mph.
For this year's contest, the company recruited
a University of Arizona entomologist to release
the roaches around the city (he's also taking
a lie detector test to prove he freed them all)
and coded the cucarachas with marking visible
only under ultraviolet light. Company owner Bruce
Tennenbaum figures the odds of anyone actually
finding a lucky lotto roach are slim. Tucson is
home to tens of millions of the insects.
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