Cockroaches

[erinee]

We have a college student from our church who has moved into our living room. After he moved all his stuff in, we started seeing roaches just in one spot in the kitchen -- we only have seen them there. It's on the counter by the the coffeemaker. I am pretty sure he brought them in, because we have never EVER had cockroaches -- we've had earwigs, centipedes, and lots of spiders, but no roaches. They started out very, very tiny, but they are getting bigger. :nails

I can't have roaches in my house, I just can't. The other bugs are bad enough, but roaches will multiply much worse than them and get a LOT bigger I'm afraid. If they're this big in the middle of winter, what will they get like in the summer? :nails What can we do to get rid of them? I WILL fumigate, if that's the only way -- I hate to do it, we have so many pets, and I hate the idea of all those chemicals, but I will if I have to. Is there something else I can try first?

I'm trying not to be mad at G, but he is such a mess! And even though he seems to be making more of an effort to clean up after himself, the fact that his apartment was so filthy when he moved out is probably why we're going to have to deal with this now! I'm really, really upset about this.

[Katigre]

You need to call an exterminator. It will require visits of pesiticides to kill them over a period of months, but then they will be gone.

I would choose the monthly applications (which are not as strong) vs. a huge fumigation. This is b/c they lay their eggs in the walls and you need to keep spraying in order to make sure all the hatched eggs get killed ASAP.

The small roaches are the worst kind to get rid of - but you CAN do it. When we moved into our house five years ago, the previous owners left us with roaches. But we've been roach free for years now, thanks to Orkin.

I would take precautions for yourselves and the kids (open all windows after spraying, leave the house for a few hours each time). I would also ask the college student to help pay for the treatments, this will be expensive and it is part of growing into responsibility to help make restitution for harming others (even unintentionally).

---------- Post added at 01:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------

German roaches (the tiny ones you have) are a pest that you will find extremely difficult to eradicate on your own - these things survive nuclear bombs :jawdrop. You can do natural things to help kill them (like borax) but I would seriously consider using chemicals for them (that's one of the few things I would use chemicals for in my home).

Also...if you are seeing even a few roaches that means there are 20x more that you can't see b/c they are nocturnal and live inside the walls/under the floor/in the vents - for them to be visible to you means their living space is getting crowded and they're out searching for food. :sick

Call Orkin or Terminex today and get an appointment set up - they'll come out and do a spraying, then will come back in 1-2 weeks, and then monthly for a few months, and then bimonthly (you'll want to have that continued at least 6 months from the last time you see any visible roach or find any dead body b/c of the issue of their eggs that may be in the wall waiting to hatch).

After the initial spraying or two it should be confined to just the areas where you've seen them (kitchen and living room probably, perhaps bathroom and basement) and not the kids' rooms and such - you can keep the pets in there).

When you hit 9 months since seeing anything you can stop the bimonthly spraying. You'll pay ~$80 per visit from the exterminator (though it's usually more for the initial visit. Be sure to call around to get quotes from a few places).

[Psyche]

How do you feel about free range gekos?

[erinee]

How do you feel about free range gekos?

Do they eat cockroaches? I wouldn't mind them, but I think dh would have a big problem with it. And with our dogs and the cat and lots of kids running around, I doubt they'd survive around here.

[expatmom]

If this college student has anything still in boxes, he needs to get rid of them now.

:hug2

[Katigre]

Yeah, have him take every.single.thing he owns and brought into your house outside to the driveway to be sorted through and shaken out.

[Naxi]

Alas, where we live cockroaches are a normal part of life...

If you have the German ones, the pest-man can use a formula for them. It is only one application and it works (nothing else does, so don't bother trying to do it yourself). This stuff they use is tiny, tiny drops on things like the hinges of cupboard doors etc. It takes time, but it works. (Because it is such small bits everywhere, it makes it really safe for kids and pets because you are unlikely to get much if any on you.)

The thing with cockroaches is that as they are dying they lay eggs. This means when the first lot of fumigation happens, it kills off all the living roaches, but the adults all lay eggs. Then a few weeks later the eggs hatch... But with this gel stuff the babies then get zapped before they are old enough to lay eggs so it wipes out the colony that way.

[jojola]

How do you feel about free range gekos?

Our cockroaches outsize our geckos. :sick

[erinee]

Our cockroaches outsize our geckos. :sick

I am sooooo sorry. :hugheart The good thing is that ours are small. I'm hoping they don't get bigger -- they seem to be getting bigger every time I see them. I can deal with them the size the are now. It's the big ones that make me :shiver When we lived down in southern Indiana, a Subway that I worked at had big cockroaches. Every morning I'd go in and turn on the lights and they'd scatter. :shiver That's what I'm really afraid will happen. We're farther north now, so I"m hoping we don't grow them that big up here.

[jojola]

I had never seen a cockroach while I lived in Canada! Here, they're just a fact of life. Blech. I hope you get rid of yours.

[klpmommy]

Do they eat cockroaches? I wouldn't mind them, but I think dh would have a big problem with it. And with our dogs and the cat and lots of kids running around, I doubt they'd survive around here.

I did the gecko thing for a while, but my dog scared them so much that one starved to death :( and I didn't realize it b/c I was used to not seeing them. The other one I caught & rehomed b/c he was getting really thin, too. There was more than enough for them to eat, too. :(