killing those pesky cockroaches

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Dear Cecil,

A friend of mine who lived in Ft. Lauderdale came up with a doozy of a concoction that worked within a matter of 2 weeks, and no cockroaches ever stepped foot into her home again! Even the ants left. Wear gloves for this and use a container you can throw away. Take a tin of sweetened condensed milk and add boric powder to it, mix until it turns blue, and into a texture whereby you can roll it into soft balls, and place them in soda bottle caps, so the mixture does not touch the surface you want to place them on. Its advised to only place in areas where children and pets cannot reach or get into because of the poison. She had all the exterminators she could find come and spray, they even had their home bombed, but still the little buggars kept coming back, until she tried this, and boy, she has spread the good word.

2

Here on the Straight Dope Message Board, it is customary to include a link to the column you are referencing. Just paste in the URL, like this:

Did I get the right one?

3

Just for the record–as mentioned in the column, boric acid is not actually a poison. It kills roaches by damaging their exoskeletons; vertebrates, without exoskeletons to worry about, will not be harmed. So there’s no need to worry about children or pets being harmed by this concoction, other than the general worries you might have if they drink the milk after it spoils.

You still do want to set your bait out of the reach of children and pets, because if they eat it, the roaches can’t. :slight_smile: