Editorial: Creepy, crawly symbolism

Friday, Aug. 4, 2006 | 7:21 a.m.

Don't bug the Nevada Legislature with symbols and bills that we don't need

Nevada's state animal? Bighorn sheep. State bird? Mountain bluebird. State flower? Sagebrush.

State insect? Nevada doesn't have one yet. But if it did, local experts told the Las Vegas Sun on Thursday, the cockroach could be in the running. Anyone who has lived in Nevada for a summer or two knows that to a cockroach, home means Nevada.

A resilient little creature, the cockroach has existed for some 250 million years (akin to the amount of time Strom Thurmond was in Congress or the number of years it will be before smoking is banned in Nevada's casinos). It is stubborn, pro-growth and, like many of this gaming state's activities, thrives best after sundown.

One university biology professor told the Sun that the cockroach also is more likely to survive a nuclear blast than humans - a tidbit that could have been mentioned on the Nevada Test Site license plate, if the cockroach were our official insect.

The Nevada Legislature hasn't designated an official state anything since the 2001 session, when lawmakers approved the state tartan (blue, white, red and yellow), the state soil (orovada dirt) and the state fanfare ("The Silver State Fanfare" by Reno's Gerald Willis).

Perhaps it is because that was the year legislators reached the end of the session's 120-day limit without final votes on more serious matters, such as the state's budget. It seems lawmakers wasted too much time on nonsense bills. So it's little wonder that no new state symbols have been created since. And lawmakers who spoke with the Sun indicated that a bill to nominate a state insect isn't likely to surface in 2007.

"I think we already have enough pests in Carson City," said Assembly Majority Leader Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas.

Frankly, we couldn't have said it better ourselves.