Scared of roaches? This will make your skin crawl--a biblical esque infestation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

[QUOTE=Big Bad Voodoo Lou]
I keep a pretty clean apartment. I’m a bachelor, but I don’t leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight, I keep my trash can covered, and I take out the trash once there is any food garbage in the bag. But this is humid, subtropical Florida, so I still see the occasional roach. Mostly dead, but I’ve seen two live ones since moving in here over the summer. One was one of those damn flying palmetto bugs, so as I was about to hit it on the wall, it flew up into the spinning fan blades, which knocked it halfway across the apartment like a pinball, onto the white popcorn ceiling. I had to use a spatula to kill it, which promptly got rinsed off and then went in the dishwasher. The palmetto bugs are larger than your average cockroach (some as large as 3"), but slower too. Even though they fly (and always tend to aim right for your head), they are easier to kill than the smaller, faster ones.
[/QUOTE]

I moved to the central florida area in 1986. I was warned that roaches tend to thrive here which was totally unacceptable to me. I contract with an extermination company that does quarterly service on my home and my business. I have never seen a roach in either place. Once a palmetto bug flew in and I was convinced I was going to have to move. Fortunately, my son was able to step on it. The crunch still haunts me. yuck.

22

I’m bookmarking this thread so that I can read it in January, when I’m cursing that I don’t live in a warmer climate.

Keep the roach stories coming–the grosser the better, especially if they take place in a sunny, balmy, tropical place.

23

I’ve visited this thread three times now, and every freakin’ time, I start reading and start feeling things crawling up my pants.

I’m leaving now. And I WILL NOT come back!

24

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
One of the great things about living up here in the tundra is that everything with more than four legs dies in October. Even on the rare occasion where you see some kind of infestation in the winter all you have to do is turn off the heat and open some windows. You’ll be insect free within hours.
[/QUOTE]

I know, I love living in the Northeast as it is, but this makes it even better.

25

[QUOTE=Pullet]
The place was probably too new to be properly inhabited by geckos. Give it a month or two and the fauna will stabilize.
[/QUOTE]

We have a healthy supply of geckos in our house as well. The hard part is convincing my wife and daughter that they need to stay.

26

[QUOTE=TexasPlayboy]
We have a healthy supply of geckos in our house as well. The hard part is convincing my wife and daughter that they need to stay.
[/QUOTE]

The geckos? Or the wife and daughter?

27

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
The geckos? Or the wife and daughter?
[/QUOTE]

Hi-Oh!!!

28

Think you made a joke but I am too stupid to get it. :frowning:

29

When I was in high school I was a busboy at a Mexican restaurant (it is long since burnt down for the insurance money). The owner kept the lights turned down and had a dark patterned carpet on the floor so the patrons couldn’t see the roaches. We used to joke that you could tell the experienced waitresses because they would step on the roaches in time to the music and the guests would just think they were being entertaining! One night I was in the kitchen and I saw the cook pull the salad container out of the fridge and pull out a handful of lettuce. He pulled the dead roaches out of the bowl, shooed away the live ones and then put it on a tray for the waitress to take. I never ate there and warned all my friends to stay away.

My mother was a teacher with the Chicago Public Schools in the ‘70s and used to go to some of the worst inner-city schools. She had a “school purse” that she would bring with her instead of her regular one. She would never put it on the ground and would always put it in a plastic bag. When she got home she would take off her shoes in the garage and would leave her bag in there too because she had heard of teachers accidentally bringing home roaches or roach eggs on their belongings.

30

[QUOTE=TexasPlayboy]
We have a healthy supply of geckos in our house as well. The hard part is convincing my wife and daughter that they need to stay.
[/QUOTE]

Yep, the geckos had already established territories in our new condo, staking out bug-catching claims around every porch light. It was my first encounter with them and I was vividly reminded of Gerald Durrell’s account of his ceiling gecko Geronimo and its encounter with a large praying mantis. And what’s not to like about geckos? They’re cute and useful!

Unfortunately, the geckos preferred brightly lit areas where they could spot the bugs from a distance. I sympathize; I’m thinking they were as icked out by the roaches as we were.

31

Since we’ve had cats in the house, we’ve never had an insect problem of any sort. Hell, the few times a large tree roach (the “palmetto bugs” to which Ogre alluded) get into the house – usually when the weather cools in autumn - the cats have so much damn fun with the thing, it’s difficult to get them away from it before it’s in parts.

32

I work in rental property management, and I have seen some amazing roach infestations. We had one tenant who would not let the exterminator spray because “that stuff will kill you.” And another who was convinced her ex-husband had given the guy something to put in the spray so she would die from it. The exterminator we use had an outside shed where he took a shower and changed his clothes before entering his own house.

We always take all appliances outside and leave them for a couple of hours there when someone moves. To hell with roach motels–stove, refrigerators and computers house entire roach metropolises.

33

Yes. I am never moving further south. Roaches and chiggers and centipedes and a climate that doesn’t kill them all off properly every year. Urgh. Yuck.

34

…and I will never again live in any sort of attached housing. If there’s any kind of bug problem, it will be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly, and no filthy weirdo schlub neighbor will ever cause my home to be infested.

35

[QUOTE=Rick]
When I moved into my house we had roaches. The prior owners kept rabbits, and did not clean up much. I had roaches you could saddle and ride.
When I remodeled my kitchen and bathrooms about 13 years ago, I made sure that all openings in the wall were sealed, I sprinkled boric acid into the walls whenever I opened them. When I went under the house for plumbing, I sprinkled more boric acid. When I put down a new subfloor, I sprinkled more boric acid. before I set the base cabinets I sprinkled more boric acid. I sealed all the seams of the cabinets with RTV silicone, and sealed the backsplash and baseboards.
The results? No roaches.
:smiley:
[/QUOTE]

Interesting that you should mention rabbits.

A few weeks ago, my landlord (who lives on the first floor; I’m on the third) told me that the 2nd-floor neighbors have a rabbit–though she’d told them before they moved in that no pets were allowed–which is why she (the landlord) and I have had to do battle with roaches since these folks moved in last November.

::shiver:: ::shiver:: ::shiver::

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I LIBERALLY applied boric acid everywhere in the kitchen that I reasonably could–under and behind the stove and refrigerator, underneath the sink, inside cabinet drawers, and around the perimeter (at the most likely travel areas). I haven’t seen any in the kitchen since, though I did see an adult one on the bathroom wall early this week. Boric acid, how do I love thee? Let me (not) count the [del]ways[/del] roaches. Amen, and amen.

Yes, fumigation and more fun with boric acid (this time in the bathroom) tomorrow.

Yippee!

And yeah, I’ll be moving as soon as I can, 'cause, among other reasons, I don’t know how long the 2nd-floor folks are going to be here.

When the roaches start paying rent, MAYBE we can work something out!

…

Naaaaaaaaaaaaah!

::SHIVER::

36

[QUOTE=Anaamika]
Think you made a joke but I am too stupid to get it. :frowning:
[/QUOTE]

[hijack]You’re too young, Anaamika, to have watched the Johnny Carson show, I’m sure. JC had a sidekick and sycophant, Ed McMahon, whose chief duty it was to howl “Hi-Oh!” every time JC delivered a particularly witty zinger in his monologue. You had to be there.[/end hijack]

God, I feel old.

37

I just swatted one of the little bastards on my kitchen counter.

I live in an old apartment building (pre-WWI). I’m pretty neat, and though maintenance does a decent job, there are always going to be some roaches in this building. Between all the nooks and crannies in this place, and all the other equally old buildings around this one, there’s no getting away from 'em.

Forget where I read it, but it seems they like water as much as leftover food. Think about that if you’re feeling lazy and inclined to just soak your pots and dishes till the morning.

38

I just moved in to a new apartment, the previous one was big, cheap, brighly illuminated and cheap, did I mention it was cheap? Like 120 bucks for a 50 sq meter thing.
So far so good, but the premise was bloody roach central, on the entrance hall you could see roaches roaming relentlessly in plain sight at night and day (also a few rats). I don´t know how I found only one or two cockroaches everyday.
The icky show sort of ended when I applied some anti roach paste on the flat openings, oh boy that thing was effective!, at first the critters would just show up dead, they didn´t last long; after a couple months they were almost completely gone.
Unfortunately they where replaced by swarms of ants…

I concur about the geckos, they would have kept the bugs at bay (at least the ants), but my GF finds them disgusting.

The new apartment is completely free of vermin, something I thougt impossible in this city.

39

Why does having rabbits attract the roaches? the grains/alfalfa/sprouts? In that case, count me in as firmly anti rabbit.

40

[QUOTE=Fozzie Bear]
I just swatted one of the little bastards on my kitchen counter.

I live in an old apartment building (pre-WWI). I’m pretty neat, and though maintenance does a decent job, there are always going to be some roaches in this building. Between all the nooks and crannies in this place, and all the other equally old buildings around this one, there’s no getting away from 'em.

Forget where I read it, but it seems they like water as much as leftover food. Think about that if you’re feeling lazy and inclined to just soak your pots and dishes till the morning.
[/QUOTE]

True, but I’ve heard it said that if you simply MUST leave your dishes to soak, to soak them in soapy water. I am made to understand that the disgusting little bastards ::shiver:: can’t survive in soapy water the way that they can in non-soapy water.