Dead roach in Utah man’s milkshake becomes Twitter hero - East Idaho News
Daybell trial: Latest updates & video
Utah

Dead roach in Utah man’s milkshake becomes Twitter hero

  Published at  | Updated at
EastIdahoNews.com Staff

Liesl Nielsen, KSL.com

Roach

SALT LAKE CITY — Life can be tragic. But sometimes, it’s just tragically hilarious.

One Salt Lake City man, known on Twitter as “Grifter,” has found a way to see the beauty in tragedy.

On Sept. 23, Grifter sucked up a cockroach through the straw of his Smashburger milkshake while at the computer security conference Derbycon in Louisville, Kentucky. Unphased, Grifter took a picture of the offending roach and tweeted it out to other conference-goers with a name for the insect.

And thus, Trevor the Roach was born.

It wasn’t long after that a hashtag was created: #trevorforget. And Trevor would become the most famous dead roach in Twitter history.

With that rallying cry, conference-goers came together, and a memorial to Trevor began to materialize in front of the infamous Smashburger. Passersby left everything from a box of tissues to a bottle of Mountain Dew as tributes to the deceased roach.

As the memorial grew, even the Louisville Metro police were caught at the scene.

Grifter received a call from Smashburger after finding the roach and later tweeted, “they’re awesome,” though the restaurant ultimately turned down his request to set up a college fund for Trevor’s thousands of fatherless children.

Smashburger closed the day after the incident to fumigate the restaurant, but has been remarkably silent on Twitter, responding to grieving conference-goers with the simple plea to “please stop.” Despite the heartfelt appeal, conference-goers aren’t done yet.

Trevor fan Jim Kennedy has since started a #TrevorForget memorial fund, which has raised over $3,000 in two days.

“As you know, the Info Sec community lost a beloved member over the weekend. Trevor the Roach,” the GoFundMe campaign reads. “To make matters worse, his entire family is also caught up in the disaster in Puerto Rico. Funds contributed will go directly to ‘Friends of Puerto Rico‘. A long-standing and respected nonprofit working to better Puerto Rico.”

It seems Trevor the Roach may go down in history as the most influential cockroach in living memory. He died as he lived: a true hero.

This article was originally published by KSL.com. It is used here with permission.

SUBMIT A CORRECTION