I’ve lived in my house in So Cal for about 6 years. I keep a pretty clean house, certainly not spotless but there aren’t heaps of garbage or piles of dishes sitting around the house for any length of time. Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen 3 big cockroaches, 2 in the house (one dead, one not) and 1 in the garage (dead). I just saw #4 outside (dead).
I am DISGUSTED by bugs in general and frankly want to burn my house down and live inside a stainless steel bubble, but I may be overreacting to 4 roaches over 6 years.
I had an exterminator come out and he said he couldn’t find any source and that sometimes roaches just wander over from a neighboring house. Is that feasible?? Or should I move to Antarctica?
Roaches, like most animals, will seek out new places to live and breed, but it’s not inevitable that they will infest your home… they may just be stopping by to check it out.
You can do something, you can have your house tented and that will kill any roaches in the house and discourage roaches from setting up house in your home for at least some period of time. You don’t have to accept them, but you should accept the fact that they may wander into your house now and then and it doesn’t mean you will eventually be knee deep in roaches.
I once lived in a low-income apartment building. It was infested with roaches. I kept my particular apartment spotless, kept my silverware and dishes in a large sealed Tupperware container, kept all food in my fridge (nothing in cabinets), and promptly washed all surfaces after cooking and/or eating. My garbage was in a sealed can and emptied frequently.
Yet I still got one or two roaches a week. My place was nothing like others in the building; some of my neighbors had swarms of the things all over and didn’t care.
If you have neighbors with bugs, you’ll have them, and of course they’ll get in from the outside. But if you’re diligent they will be rare.
If by big roaches you mean the American/Australiancockroaches then yes, they are inevitable. They are strong flyers and will travel half a mile or more in a night. In warmer climates, they also live quite happily outside in gardens.
Never mind the neighbours. If anyone else in the entire *city *has these things, then you will see a couple of these a year.
If it really worries you, lay down a residual surface spray around the external door frames and window frames twice a year. They will still come in, but they will die within a few hours.