IF I HAD TO CHOOSE...

Deciding which insect I would be is a daunting task, considering there are over 900,000 types of insects in the world, so I have narrowed it down to a few choices. One option is the cicada. Cicadas have been hibernating underground for seventeen years and are about to awaken to swarm by the billions. I would make a great cicada because I love to sleep and I’m very sociable-I would enjoy hanging out with billions of friends-but, then, I decided against it.

There’s way too much competition for everything AND, on top of that, cicadas are everyone’s favorite meal. I'd have to spend all my time hiding from squirrels, birds, wasps and people. Besides, if I slept for 17 years, I’d never catch up on my favorite TV shows.

My next choice was an ant. It would be great to be an ant because they can lift 50 times their body weight. That would be like me lifting 7,500 pounds! My friends at the gym would be so impressed (if I actually went to the gym).But if I were an ant, my friends would be ants and they could all lift that much, so what’s the point? Ants are really organized and believe in teamwork, but the life of an ant is just work, work, work, so I think I'll pass.

Bees are great, too--they really enjoy the outdoors and produce honey, one of my favorite things. But they're having a hard time lately with so many dying from "Colony Collapse Disorder,” so I will have to pass again.

Being a butterfly is appealing because they get to live two lives, one as a caterpillar crawling around and then as a beautiful butterfly, but when I learned some butterflies only live a week, I knew it was time to rethink my decision.

When I read that termites have a soldier caste, I thought I’d found my favorite insect, but then I learned that they are usually blind and like to commit suicide, so that was definitely out.

Then I found my favorite insect, the cockroach: it’s nocturnal, like I am; it can live anywhere, but prefers warm temperatures, like I do; it loves sugar, definitely me; and it's really hardy and who doesn’t want to be hardy? I could be the insect everyone loves to hate. Although cockroaches and people have been locked in battle forever, we cockroaches know we're winning!