Texas zoo overwhelmed by vengeful Valentines who want cockroaches named after their exes

Valentine's Day can be a tough 24 hours for jilted lovers, but this year, the El Paso Zoo in Texas offered up a unique chance to enact revenge on an ex.

First, you got to name a cockroach after a former flame.

Then, that six-legged stand in is given to a meerkat to be eaten alive, with its unfortunate end streamed live online. 

"The Bronx Zoo has a program where you name a cockroach and we thought, hey, wouldn't it be funny if one of our animals ate the cockroaches? And that's when our little light bulb went on," said Sarah Borrego, the zoo's event coordinator and the brains behind the Quit Bugging Me campaign.

Zoo staff thought the project might appeal to the lovelorn locally, said Borrego, but she didn't expect such an overwhelming response for revenge: 6,000 entries from all over the world. The zoo even had to stop accepting submissions as of Feb. 10, the Associated Press reported.

All those insects presented a problem to the caregivers in charge of counting the meerkats' caloric intake — a cockroach being the meerkat version of a red velvet cupcake.

"There's no way we can give them six thousand cockroaches," she said.

"Our meerkats eat one or two cockroaches for their treats. In comparison to their size, the meerkats are so small and the cockroaches are so big. There's no way."

Sharing the love

The zoo's solution? For other species to share the love. Or lack thereof. 

"Some primates are going to get cockroaches. Some birds. We have a shrew that eats cockroaches," Borrego said.

"So, we have cockroaches for pretty much the whole zoo."

The whole zoo, and the whole world, as the Valentine's vengeance is streamed via Facebook live, in what Borrego warned is not a dainty devouring.

"These animals, they don't have manners. They don't know how to eat. So they chew them up, they rip off the wings. They get into it, and it's so funny to watch."

There was no charge to name a cockroach, but Borrego said the zoo was happy to take donations to help pay for the animals' food and habitat maintenance. And they'll post all the names as decorations in the meerkat enclosure.

Cockroach catharsis

The cockroaches seem to be having a cathartic effect on people who are not feeling the love on Valentine's Day.

"It's giving people some kind of closure. And if naming a cockroach after your ex is giving you closure, I think that's great," she said.

Perhaps, it's also an edible antidote to an overhyped holiday.

"It's a little anti-Valentine's Day, which I think we need," she said.

 "I'm sick of the whole romance thing. And Valentine's Day is so commercialized. I just went to the store and there are so many stuffed animals. Ugh. No thanks!"

Borrego said she may, or may not, have named a couple of cockroaches after her own exes. 

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