This Lady Breeds 100,000 Roaches and Loves Them Like Her 'Babies'
LatestNot gonna sugarcoat this one because sugar attracts bugs and my skin is already crawling: There’s apparently a lady in China who, this very moment, is breeding a hundred thousand roaches in a house specifically devoted to the purpose. She loves them. They are her “babies.”
According to the South China Morning Post, 37-year-old Yuan Meixia has turned an entire house in the countryside into, basically, a roach farm. We’re not talking the little ones, either—she’s raises the big, winged Palmetto bugs that haunted my Southern swamp childhood. She ultimately sells them to a factory (apparently this is a booming business in China!), but while as they’re under her roof, they’re family:
The insects will eventually be dried and sold to a factory in faraway Anhui province, but during their short lives with Yuan, she treats them “like her children”.
“These are all my children, my babies,” she says to a Southern Metropolis News reporter on a tour of the facility in Linbian village. Yuan resides at another house in Siqian county, but visits the breeding house every day.
She’s replaced the doors with silk nets, and sealed any holes through which the little darlings could escape. “Like children, they need sufficient nutrition,” she said, explaining she feeds them by leaving out honeydews, apples and rice bran, which they “swarm.” She continued her lecture:
“They are most active at night, mating and hunting for food,” said Yuan. “They mate with each other after eating. The mating process lasts for two hours, and then spawning [happens]. Every spawn hatches dozens of baby cockroaches.”
Everybody’s got to make a living but god. damn.
Photo via smuay/Shutterstock.