by Jeannette 48 Replies latest social humour
I am no help at all, as my interest is only academic. There are no cockroaches where I live.
Diatomacious Earth is great. I would buy it at the pet store. I would leave out a a bowl for a pet rodent; chincilla, guinea pig, hamster or gerbil, which will happily roll in it. The dust picks up all the oils in their fur and leaves them fluffy clean.
Roach motels.
Bugs get in them but they cant get out.
They work in Florida, the roach capital of the world.
I was standing in line at the local Wal-Mart store in the
gardening center the other day. So the guy in front of me
holding a bottle of insecticde and sak the salesman, "I have
lots of cockroaches, is this good for them.
"NO", says the salesman. "It'll kill them..
My grandson collect large ,large cockroaches, he's a bug nut.LOL
The crazy thing, his folks purchase them for him...
Ha. I got rid of carpenter ants at our cottage in the Laurentians by......
sealing off the windows , backing my van up to the house, hooking a plastic pipe to my exhaust that went to one window, taped that up, started the van, and went for a swim. Bye-bye carpenter ants and spiders.
Ha. I got rid of carpenter ants at our cottage in the Laurentians by......
sealing off the windows , backing my van up to the house, hooking a plastic pipe to my exhaust that went to one window, taped that up, started the van, and went for a swim. Bye-bye carpenter ants and spiders.
I wonder if that would work for termites?
Here you go....ready? This is what I did when I saw just one and only one cockroach in my house...
Empty everything out of your cupboards....every cupboard. high and low.
Throw out everything not 100% sealed, all cereals and chip bags, everything.
Clean all bottles and cans with a minimal bleach solution.
Clean all cupboard shelves and door with a minimal bleach solution.
Pull your fridge out from against the wall and clean under it...all of it. Clean the back of your fridge as well.
Inspect every single appliance particularly the toaster and microwave. Roaches love grease (oh by the way, they love earhair, nosehair, and eyebrow hair also...that should give you more of an incentive to disinfect everything.) so make sure the filter in your micro is clean and the underside of the micro as well. THe toast particles in your toaster and even the underside of your blender.
Once everything is clean and the non-sealed items are discarded. Then you can restock the shelves.
Now, You must obliterate all sign of them....they hide in cracks. So, you have to get a vacuum. Not a stand up push/pull vacuum, but a tank vacuum, wet-dry... Strong suction.
Take the bleach solution and test to make sure that it wont stain your floor in some obscure little area. With a small brush, go around all the base boards and edges with the solution following right behind with the vacuum. When all the edges are done, disinfect the rest of the floor
Once everything is clean and disinfected, then and only then would I suggest stuff like boric acid. It may kill the roaches that come into contact with it, but if they are in your box of cheerios laying their little eggs and "breeding" then there really is no need.
Call me obsessive compulsive on this if you would like. I hate bugs and will not screw around with roaches particularly. After you have done all that you can do from a hygenic standpoint....bring in a pest controller and have them spray inside and out.
Take all boxed or bagged food that your family eats and put it in sealable containers, no not the cheap stuff, the "in your face roaches" stuff.
That may well do the trick. It did for me.
SOP
Oh, by the way, if you are in an apartment, the apartments that surround you may be the cause. the option above will create a "persona non-grata" environment and although you may see an occasional roach, chances of them roosting in your apartment are slim.
The other option if apartment dwelling is your situation...find another apartment. Even if roaches are not roosting in my apartment, if I see one, I go crazy...could not take it AT ALL!
Thank you, again, folks for all the good advice, and believe me, I will try it all. I wonder if cockroaches aren't stronger and more virulent than they were years ago as I got a few back 30 years ago and I got rid of them, no problem. Then my son called me from Florida where he was going to college and told me that his apartment had cockroaches. I told him what I did, and he did the same thing and got rid of them. But my goodness these, as one poster stated, they would survive a nuclear blast. (My son hated this religion and went to college, thank goodness.) Nonetheless, with all these border children coming in to this country with scabies, lice, and who knows what all attached to their knapsacks, this stuff may be really handy to have around. Thanks again, love to you all.
Hot-Shot Ant, Roach and Germ Killer (it's the GREEN can). It says that it is unscented and last 12 weeks. Both of these are lies.
HOWEVER hide your food and take the can and start from the inner most room and, working your way to the front door (have an exit strategy), spray all your baseboards, corners, cracks and around each window and door opening (anywhere there is an hole in a wall or molding). Leave the house and go have an ice cream. Get sprinkles.
SPRINKLES ARE IMPORTANT.
When you get back to your apartment, the place will be fine for human breathing (it's not a high I would recommend, honestly). You may find dead roaches about in the coming days and because it's also a germ killer, anything tracked in will be killed as well. This joyous feeling will last about two months and about halfway through the third month it will be time to get another ice cream. It ALMOST lasts 3 months... or it might last and I just got paranoid.
I lived in an old apartment complex for over four years and only saw 2 roaches. One about my second month in (and I found this... HEAVENLY POTION) and another when I forgot and tried to make it to 14 weeks somewhere in my 3rd year there. The apartment had pest control, but everyone else around me still had problems, especially the people behind me as they would cook never clean, leaving food out for days. I didn't know ANY of this until years later when I was about to move out and the apartment manager asked my why I never called about the roaches. LOL.
They can live on ANYTHING...including the glue in bookbinding. So get rid of all those old WTBTS publications!
Outside they live in leaf mold, compost, dog poop...you name it...and can wander into the house through tiny cracks.
They were thick in the old 124 Bethel building basement and kitchen. We moped everyday with amonia and used Boric Acid, worked OK and was cheap....but NEVER got rid of ALL of them.
