# What is WITH these roaches??
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [June 11, 2002, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458 "2002-06-11T14:48:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@booklover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/booklover)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/1 "2002-06-11T14:48:57Z")
I very rarely have roaches in my apartment. The ones I do have normally are spotted in my bathroom (mainly because there’s a hole in the wall underneath my claw-foot bathtub, and they can come out of other apartments through the hole).
The other evening I was minding my own business, watching TV, when I heard an odd rustling noise. Max the cat immediately swiveled in the direction of the sound, so I crept forward. BIG ROACH! Scuttling out from under the closed bathroom door.
Solution? Overturned Tupperware container, will dump him outside later.
Couple seconds later, another scuttling noise. Another BIG ROACH! Repeat above scenario. Then a third. By this point, it felt like “Night of the Humongous Roaches”.
My question is, why would these roaches forsake the dark, moist bathroom for my well-lit and dry bedroom? And why three at once? Was it a little buggy brigade, come to free the first from its Tupperware prison?
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### Author:  [@CnoteChris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CnoteChris)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/2 "2002-06-11T15:52:08Z")
Overcrowding?
I wouldn’t go in that bathroom if I were you.
Seriously? Beats me. The day I figure out a roach and what its motivations are is the day I hope they put me in a home.
Sorry.
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### Author:  [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/3 "2002-06-11T16:11:52Z")
Patching holes in walls is pretty easy. If the bathtub is claw-footed, there should be enough room to access the hole (or at least smear some plaster over the hole with a stick). You might as well be thorough about the whole thing and shove some borax into the hole before you seal it.
There might be something in your theory of the second wave of roaches following the first. Ants leave a scent trail – why not roaches? Was there any food that might have been attracting the critters?
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### Author:  [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/4 "2002-06-11T19:04:45Z")
They are a family.
They are breeding.
No matter what you do they will get through.
They will eat through glass or solid diamond or lead (growing fatter and harder in the process).
They are solely there to horrify and torment and appal.
Long after the nukes drop and you are dead, they will feast upon your dry bones.
NOTHING will stop them.
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### Author:  [@Honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honey)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/5 "2002-06-11T19:34:36Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by booklover \*
> \*\*…Solution? Overturned Tupperware container, will dump him outside later. \*\*
I thought I was the only one who does this. I even do this with flies. With mosquitos however, I take no prisoners.
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### Author:  [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/6 "2002-06-11T19:44:34Z")
I’m a Yankee, by gum, but lived in Georgia for about a year and a half. My God! I saw roaches down there that could carry off small children and would need a rifle to take down! Seriously, these things were bigger than mice!
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### Author:  [@bernse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bernse)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/7 "2002-06-11T22:46:06Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Solution? Overturned Tupperware container, will dump him outside later.
Your a softy. So am I. But for the love of god, kill the damn things already! They become immune to pesticides, but have a way to go before they are immune to the sole of a boot.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [June 11, 2002, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/8 "2002-06-11T23:24:50Z")
**bernse** : Could you imagine a roach immune to the sole of a boot? Titanium exoskeleton and microfusion core! The T[ermite]-800.
😃
Seriously, roaches (and all insects) are motivated by two things: Food and sex. As there were no other roaches around in your living room, they were searching for food. As they were above-average in size, they have obviously been eating well (or were of a different species altogether, but larger insects generally need more food to thrive anyway), so there must be plenty of good food within your walls (think paste and dead stuff). Of course, outside your walls you have ambrosia (bread and meats and rotten stuff in the Trash Can of Paradise), so that’s a pretty strong incentive to risk leaving the ancestral home. The best way to stop the whole process is by calling in Terminix and getting it done right, IMO.
Now, if large roaches considered you sexually attractive, we would have a whole 'nother problem. 😃
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### Author:  [@dqa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dqa)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2002, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/9 "2002-06-12T00:29:25Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Derleth \*
> **bernse: Could you imagine a roach immune to the sole of a boot?**
Perhaps, say, an [Überroach](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?postid=1147211#post1147211)?
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### Author:  [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2002, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/10 "2002-06-12T00:34:22Z")
I hate to say this…but. If you have roaches in your bathroom, you have them other places too. A roach doesn’t need a hole, it can squeeze through a crack a quarter it’s size. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [June 12, 2002, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-with-these-roaches/113458/11 "2002-06-12T00:51:55Z")
Remind me to never, and I mean never, eat at your place. Besides the fact that roaches gross me out, I’m not fond of eating off of dinnerware that’s been used as insect abodes.