Archy the Cockroach-Discovered!

You might have missed this little news item.  Scientists have found a new kind of cockroach in Africa, notable for its ability to leap considerable distances.  Here is a video link with one of the little guys going airborne:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnuExrjOjfM&feature=player_embedded

Mildly interesting you say, so long as the little critters stay in Africa.  But say, does this fellow look a tad familiar?

Here is a much older picture...

Perhaps this brings back a few memories from long ago English class.  Yes, the scientists have discovered a long hidden colony of Archies.

Archy was, or is from a certain perspective, a cockroach in physical form.  But he had the reincarnated spirit of a vers libre poet.  He apparently turned up every night at the desk of newspaper columnist Don Marquis, and laboriously typed out his observations on the world.  From the 1916 column in which Archy is introduced:

"We came into our room earlier than usual in the morning, and discovered a gigantic cockroach jumping about on the keys. He did not see us, and we watched him. He would climb painfully upon the framework of the machine and cast himself with all his force upon a key, head downward, and his weight and the impact of the blow were just sufficient to operate the machine, one slow letter after another. He could not work the capital letters, and he had a great deal of difficulty operating the mechanism that shifts the paper so that a fresh line may be started. We never saw a cockroach work so hard or perspire so freely in all our lives before. After about an hour of this frightfully difficult literary labor he fell to the floor exhausted, and we saw him creep feebly into a nest of the poems which are always there in profusion."

Clearly, the original leaping cockroach!

Archy held court for a full decade, following Marquis from one newspaper to the next.  He had a sidekick named Mehetibel-a cat with rather shady morals who claimed to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra.  From the vast trove of Archy wisdom, here is my favorite, a Prohibition era entry:

archy interviews a pharaoh

By Don Marquis, in “archy and mehitabel,” 1927

boss i went
and interviewed the mummy
of the egyptian pharaoh
in the metropolitan museum
as you bade me to do
what ho
my regal leatherface
says i
greetings
little scatter footed
scarab
says he
kingly has been
says i
what was your ambition
when you had any
insignificant
and journalistic insect
says the royal crackling
in my tender prime
i was too dignified
to have anything as vulgar
as ambition
the ra ra boys
in the seti set
were too haughty
to be ambitious
we used to spend our time
feeding the ibises
and ordering
pyramids sent home to try on
but if i had my life
to live over again
i would give dignity
the regal razz
and hire myself out
to work in a brewery
old tan and tarry
says i
i detect in your speech
the overtones
of melancholy
yes i am sad
says the majestic mackerel
i am as sad
as the song
of a soudanese jackal
who is wailing for the blood red
moon he cannot reach and rip
on what are you brooding
with such a wistful
wishfulness
there in the silences
confide in me
my imperial pretzel
says i
i brood on beer
my scampering whiffle snoot
on beer says he
my sympathies
are with your royal
dryness says i
my little pest
says he
you must be respectful
in the presence
of a mighty desolation
little archy
forty centuries of thirst
look down upon you
oh by isis
and by osiris
says the princely raisin
and by pish and phthush and phthah
by the sacred book perembru
and all the gods
that rule from the upper
cataract of the nile
to the delta of the duodenum
i am dry
i am as dry
as the next morning mouth
of a dissipated desert
as dry as the hoofs
of the camels of timbuctoo
little fussy face
i am as dry as the heart
of a sand storm
at high noon in hell
i have been lying here
and there
for four thousand years
with silicon in my esophagus
as gravel in my gizzard
thinking
thinking
thinking
of beer
divine drouth
says i
imperial fritter
continue to think
there is no law against
that in this country
old salt codfish
if you keep quiet about it
not yet
what country is this
asks the poor prune
my reverend juicelessness
this is a beerless country
says i
well well said the royal
desiccation
my political opponents back home
always maintained
that i would wind up in hell
and it seems they had the right dope
and with these hopeless words
the unfortunate residuum
gave a great cough of despair
and turned to dust and debris
right in my face
it being the only time
i ever actually saw anybody
put the cough
into sarcophagus
dear boss as i scurry about
i hear of a great many
tragedies in our midsts
personally i yearn
for some dear friend to pass over
and leave to me
a boot legacy
yours for the second coming
of gambrinus

archy

more on don marquis

More on Egypt tomorrow.......