We shall fight them on the benches.

 Humankind is a bit wussy, when you think about it. We’ve put a man on the moon, and we’ve invented all sorts of machines to make our day-to-day lives a lot easier. But really, we’re scared. We’re scared of death, we’re scared of the unknown, but we’re most scared of insects and common-or-garden creepy-crawlies.

 We’re supposedly the dominant species on the planet and we spend a fair bit of our leisure time fighting little creatures no bigger than a fingernail. Take the ant. It has many characteristics we should admire. It has an incredible strength-to-size ratio, brilliant communications and a work ethic which would put most of us to shame. So do we admire them? Do we live in harmony with this remarkable little creature? Not likely. We dust them, pour scalding water on them, spray them, do anything to stop them coming into our homes.

 Then there’s the spider. Now, we do have a few poisonous spiders I admit. But for the most part, they’re just a vital part of the food chain, keeping flies and other insects in their places. Maybe it’s their ability to do something that we can’t even do with aerosols which scares us. Just knowing there’s a spider somewhere in the bedroom is enough to make me spend the night on the lounge. My screams from the bathroom usually mean there’s a huntsman trying bravely to climb the sheer walls of the bath. I try not to kill spiders (ok I don’t try too hard) but if there’s a funnel-web I usually introduce it to a close view of the Yellow Pages.

 And the humble fly. Let’s face it, Australia is run by flies. We try to deter them with screens and silly, beaded, coloured blinds in shop doorways. We make them stick to flypapers, we hit them with knock-down sprays, and we slather ourselves in insect repellent. Someone, somewhere, once hung corks off his hat to deter them. Unfortunately, this was photographed by a travel writer and now most of the world thinks we all wear them all the time. Of course, urban Aussies, happy under our clouds of pollution and car fumes, can keep flies in check. But once you get out in that fresh country air, flies rule. Have as many corks hanging off you as you like, a blowie’s still going to fly into your mouth as you eat your food.

 Don’t forget slugs and snails. They slide, they dare to eat our flowers and vegies; they must be destroyed with pellets or the kinder, more Aussie solution, in a slug pub – funny how letting them drink themselves to death on free beer seems a kind way to kill, isn’t it? Plus it’s a waste of good beer!

 Mosquitoes are a menace too. They are so small, so devious and can carry nasty viruses. So we try our best to put them off. More insect repellent on our exposed bits. And we burn those little scented coils to keep them away – of course; we only have the manufacturer’s word for this. If you weren’t bitten at least once, you wouldn’t bother to buy anymore coils, would you? You can take direct action too – the mozzie zapper. But don’t buy one yourself or you’ll have every mozzie in the street at your back door. No, buy one and give it to your neighbour. Let them have your mozzies and have to listen to that sickening “bbzzzttt” every time a moth hits the electric mesh which, let’s face it, is what moths do.

 Now there’s another one, moths. They eat our clothes so we make our clothes stink to high heaven to discourage them. Their larvae eat valuable Persian rugs – I am ever-vigilant with the camphor.

 However, we save most of our fear and loathing for the cockroach. It’s really just a beetle. Plenty of insects are dirtier, more dangerous, more invasive. Fleas are harder to get rid of and they bite you; dust mites can be a far greater health risk and there are hundreds of them feeding on your skin while you sleep each night. But we don’t seem to mind them compared with the loathsome roach. Maybe it’s the way they scuttle. Or the way they sit, antennae twitching, in your fruit bowl. It could be the old scientist’s tale that in the event of a nuclear holocaust cockroaches will become the dominant species.

 So this unfortunate-looking insect feels the full weight of humankind’s wrath. Surface sprays and baits are now improved so that one infected cockroach kills all his mates. We even bomb our own kitchens to get rid of them. It’s meant to kill all adult roaches and make the eggs infertile. Clever? No. We’ve just solved all their over-crowding problems for them in one stroke.