By Thom Walker
Really.
If it bears the winning bar code on its shiny
brown back.
Totally confused yet?
This should help clarify things: It's another
promotion by Bruce Tennenbaum, owner of Arizona
Pest Control Co., 1127 N. Rook Ave.
For the past two years, Tennenbaum has sent Tucsonans
out on quests into the dark, dank nooks and crannies
of their homes looking for prize-winning cockroaches.
In 1996, the contest was for the largest cockroach;
last year, it was for the fastest.
Now, Tennenbaum plans a kind of cockroach lottery.
"This year, I decided to do something a
little different,'' he said, giggling gleefully.
"A lot of thought went into this one.''
What he came up with was "The Fifty-Thousand-Dollar
Roach'' contest.
Tennenbaum said he had hoped to offer a $1 million
prize, but couldn't get insurance to cover that
much money in case somebody won.
Finally, he was able to get a $50,000 policy
from Sport Worx, a Georgia company that insures
such events as million dollar hole-in-one shootouts.
Even $50,000 was hard, he added. "They had
never insured a cockroach before.''
Anyhow, here's how
the contest will work:
Working with Carl Olson, associate curator for
the University of Arizona Department of Entomology,
Tennenbaum will be releasing 100 cockroaches around
town.
"We're not breeding and releasing them,''
Tennenbaum stressed, hoping to head off charges
that he's adding to the city's cockroach population.
The cockroaches will be marked with bar codes
and numbers that are visible only under a special
ultraviolet light. Nobody will be able to duplicate
the system, Tennenbaum maintained.
In addition, Olson will undergo a polygraph test
to verify that the bugs were all released.
Clearly, a lot of thought has gone into this.
So that's the game. Catch a cockroach, and hope
it's a lucky one.
Tennenbaum said the American cockroach, the most
common breed around Tucson, can live up to 500
days.
He added, however, there's no way of computing
the odds of 100 marked roaches surviving in the
underworld jungle of insect life until they can
be caught.
"There's probably 350 roaches per manhole
in Tucson,'' he said. "How many manholes
are there in Tucson? Are there a billion roaches?
I don't know.''
Potentially, any cockroach could be a winner.
From May 15 through June 26, people will be invited
to bring their captured cockroaches in to Arizona
Pest Control, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Monday through
Friday. The critters can be brought in dead or
alive.
You won't know right then whether you have a
winning cockroach, though.
Tennenbaum will freeze them to keep them fresh
until the final competition.
That'll be June 29, when all the cockroaches
will go on display during the Tucson Sidewinders
game at Tucson Electric Park.
Then, a police officer, with lights flashing,
will deliver an envelope with the winning number
for the $50,000 prize.
Olson will examine the bugs with an ultraviolet
light. Anybody who has a marked roach will win
$100. The owner of the $50,000 roach will win
an annuity payable in 10 annual payments of $5,000.
If nobody matches the winning number, the owner
of the largest roach will win $1,000.
Tennenbaum said he hopes this will be his biggest
cockroach contest yet. He plans to have 50 billboards
spreading the catch-the-cockroach-fever message,
and expects to spend about $30,000 on the contest,
he said.
The contests have paid off, he said. "My
business has increased about 35 percent. Name
recognition - that's the key. Wherever I go: 'Hey,
you're the roach guy.' ''
His fondest dream is that this latest cockroach
campaign will land him on Leno or Letterman.
He's given it a lot of thought.
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