F. tularensis is a highly-virulent zoonotic pathogen that causes significant morbidity and mortality globally. To facilitate future advances in our understanding of this important bacterium, we sought to develop an improved insect host system that eliminates undesirable biological and logistical trade-offs that accompany other popular host species such as D. melanogaster and G. mellonella. While insects lack adaptive immune functions, their innate immune systems share similar regulation and effector mechanisms with mammalian innate immune systems \cite{25699030,24392358,23517918,23271509}. Because of this, insects can provide investigators with a host-pathogen interaction system capable of high-throughput that would be either financially or ethically unacceptable in mammals. Importantly, insects also provide scientists at institutions that lack access to mammalian housing facilities an alternative means by which to assess in vivo host-pathogen interactions. Finally, insects and other arthropods can be important environmental reservoirs and vectors for numerous zoonotic pathogens, including F. tularensis. Thus, insect host systems also aid in illuminating how these microorganisms evade arthropod immune systems during this part of their lifecycle without the necessity of rearing sanguinivorous arthropods in the lab. Here, we sought to identify an experimental host for F. tularensis that is (1) readily-available, (2) simple to rear in the laboratory, (3) tolerant of mammalian body temperatures, (4) large enough in size to allow consistent delivery of bacterial inoculations using standard needle-syringe combinations, (5) long-lived with low background mortality, and (6) hardy enough to withstand multiple injections of bacteria and/or antibiotics. We found that the B. dubia OS cockroach satisfied all of these requirements.