Cockroaches!

[WifeOfBath]

After two weeks of living with my in-laws, we finally moved into our new place on Thursday night. You can guess what greeted us when we walked into the kitchen... that's right, scurrying brown bugs! I don't know if it's a combination of living in new, clean homes in the 'burbs my whole life, luck, and living in relatively few rental homes, but before that night I'd never seen a cockroach before. Even so, I was pretty sure what it was. I've been watching that Discovery show Verminators for the last couple of months (which is very good).

Fortunately, my new landlady sent out an exterminator within 3 hours of me calling her, and now we have bait set up and the perimeter of the kitchen was sprayed, the basement, and the outside of the house. The previous tenants of the house left it pretty dirty even though they told the landlady that they would have it professionally cleaned-- the grout on the kitchen tile is black with dirt and it's only 7 months old. They also left loose cat food and didn't clean out the cabinets, oven etc.

Aside from just bitching, I wanted to know if anyone else has had a problem with roaches, and how hard it was to keep them controlled. I'm completely grossed out by the idea of these little fuckers crawling all over my food and I don't want this to be an ongoing problem. At the moment they seem to be crawling out from their hiding places and dying so I'm finding a lot of them (dead) on the floor. They are truly disgusting.They seem to be hiding in the spaces in the kitchen cabinets.

Also any awful horror stories would be much appreciated as commiseration. :biggrin1:

 

[Xcuze]

Ive never even seen a cockroach in real life yet it seems like everyone else has had infestations! Life's so unfair..

 

[D_Pubert Stabbingpain]

I only lived in 1 place that had indoor roaches and the manager had the entire building sprayed every 3 months. We would have to put all our possessions and everything from the kitchen cabinets in the center of the living room and they would spray where the floor meets the baseboards and in all the kitchen cabinets. The unfortunate problem is that they, like bugs in general, are looking for food and water. There was always pooled water on the top of the apartment house. From there, they would crawl down into everyplace. Sadly, I think that once they are that bad, you have them for good because of nests in the walls, etc.. The manager would have to fog the entire building to totally rid them but that entails kicking everyone out of their apartments and is more expensive so it is not done. You could bring that up as an option to your landlady in your home.

Now that I have a home there are black roaches, crickets and silverfish (fortunately, I have not seen any scorpions!) that want to get out of the heat into my *relatively* cooler house. The one thing that works real good for everything, including spiders is

Diatomaceous earth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can get the food grade (don't get the one made for pool filters) at any Home Improvement Store that is less harmful to humans and animals but you still need to use gloves, be fully dressed (no shorts) and wear a mask. Typically, you spread the white powder all around the outside of the house but you can also us it indoors, again, where the floor meets the baseboards and in the cracks where the carpet meets the wall.

It will cost you around $7 US for a small bag that I only used 1/2 of for the entire outside and inside my house.

If you are not comfortble with white powder everywhere, you can buy any commercial bug spray and apply it every month or so but you will still find dead roaches as long as they have nests in the house.

Good luck!
:smile::smile:

 

[Northland]

Oh they make such lovely pets!

Back a few years, we were looking at apartments after getting our eviction notice (on Easter Sunday) when we saw a charming railroad apartment on Brownell Street in the Stapleton section of Nightmare Island. It was a horrid place-I did not like it at all. My mother wandered into the kitchen and lifted the metal plate covering the stove top. Dozens of pesky roaches went racing about in all directions and we left. Soon after we located the roach free place on Bay Street and all was reasonably well (although it meant having to continue sharing a room).

In my own life, roaches have come and gone. I have used sprays, boric acid, and sticky tape. If you have children (or at least a child) those aren't good methods. Well, boric acid is, as is tape as long as it is out of the reach of a child who might try tasting the boric acid (a white powder, it doesn't look at all dangerous, but it is). And kids love sticky tape, it's such fun to play with! Sprays are just deadly. I used spray once and coated the kitchen floor with it-then walked barefoot on it. It tingled. Clearly, not a safe idea, especially if you have children (although it is good if you have relatives overstaying their welcome).

Wash the floors meticulously for the next several weeks, and then keep at it. Sweep the floors daily to eliminate any crumbs, and wipe and wash counter tops as well. Keep all food securly sealed-not just in a jar, you may also want to place the jar in a zip-loc bag or something of that nature.

Keep in mind, roaches for some reason love books and newspapers- not really sure why. So dust off books and book shelves regularly-and then sweep or vacuum. Empty vacuum bags out regularly-the food particles in there can feed an army of crawlers.

Have your new neighbors over for a party and you can all dance La Cucaracha-proper foot stepping will eliminate many roaches.

At present I have not had a roach in a few years-which in New York is something of a miracle.

Roach horror stories-in January of 1998 I turned on the kitchen ceiling light one night and there were hundreds of the bas-tards in the kitchen. On the counter, on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling. At the time the roadway out front was being dug up for pipes and sewer work which may have caused the influx.

Then there was the night I was sitting in the dark, except for the television set light, and I reached over to take a drink of apple juice-I don't think I have to tell you what was there. I diidn't shut the lights off again for a month.

Best of luck, just remember you have to keep at it until they are gone and then for a while longer, since there may be some unhatched eggs. By the way, you may have noticed a lot of poppy seeds around your new home-newsflash! Those are roach eggs (they look amazingly similar).

 

[Bbucko]

As a veteran of many cheap apartments in Boston I have two words for you: Boric Acid