Sign Crawls with Bugs

Cockroaches spell out warning

Commentary
by Bruce Felps

Terminix knows how to get across a point.

The national exterminator and its advertising firm, Publicis, took out a free-standing billboard at Mockingbird Station Monday to publicize the dangers of cockroaches skittering about one’s residence.

It’s kind of an interactive billboard.

The message read, “E. COLI,” one of multiple diseases carried by the bugs. The acrylic letters were filled with a few thousand roaches, you know, clamoring and crawling all over each other just to make a more emphatic point. The understudies filled the period.

Before PETA gets its roach-undies all in a bunch, the Dallas Morning News reported that the bugs got a shade-break every 10-15 minutes to avoid baking alive. Roaches, evidently, belong to a strong union.

The letters also had air holes that allowed the insects to breathe and, in some cases, escape.

Interesting dichotomy, though, that an exterminator company would take semi-great pains to protect the very bugs it kills for a living. Wonder what happened to all those roaches after the display came down.


Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. Cockroaches are one of two living things he has no problem killing.

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