I’ll start. Apt next door is having a cockroach infected. 4 days ago, I was playing sims on my laptop, wearing my eyeglasses. Right lens got blurry, took off, huge cockroach was crawling across inside of lens. While I was wearing them. Freak out ensued.
Life Pro Tip
A really cheap and effective way of getting rid of roaches, without even using poison…
Get a medium to large metal coffee can, or any old metal can I guess. Make sure it’s cleaned out and dry to start with, and is not rusty.
Then get some spray cooking oil and a few scraps of bread. Spray the inside of the can with cooking oil, then drop some bread scraps in there.
Now you have a roach trap, set it near where the roaches are generally at their worst, and they’ll crawl out of the walls and into the can to get their munch on, but won’t be able to crawl back out.
Check it every couple or few days or so, eventually the roaches will start piling up and most of them that have been in there for a bit will end up dying because they’re covered in the cooking oil and apparently can’t absorb oxygen.
Take the trap as necessary and either dump it in the toilet and flush them away, or if you have access to a bonfire burn pile, bag the little demons up and burn them. Then clean the can out and reset the trap as necessary.
Even with the worst infestations I’ve ever seen, this tends to eliminate over 99% of them within about two weeks, if not less.
A few thoughts about the different approaches between my trap vs poison…
If you poison them, then they just go back into your walls and die, further stinking the place up, is more dangerous to people and pets, and honestly isn’t even nearly as effective as people would hope.
But roaches are simple and stupid. They’re really easy to trap, and why the hell would I want them going back into the walls in the first place? Especially when I can just flush them instead?
The whole method of operation of the trap is to make sure the roaches can’t crawl back out after they get in. So you need a totally smooth surface plus the cooking oil so they can’t climb back out.
If by chance you were to use a rusty can, that would give them a textured surface to grip onto and likely manage to crawl back out, which would defeat the trap.
Edit: It probably won’t hurt if the can happens to have only a couple or few small spots of rust, as long as it’s not so rusted as to give them a brown brick road to crawl back up and out. Any which way, the goal is to make sure that once they get in, they can’t get out.
Thank you for passing through to read my advice. By all means please share the advice to anyone that happens to need it…
I also read your post, and I can fully agree from the Gulf Coast of the USA, that swamps can be rather nasty and have lots of weird bugs and slimeys, but usually not quite as bad as you described.
Maybe lay off the shrooms and smoke some green instead? 😂🤣
Was gifted a lightly used Keurig machine. Partner started noticing little roaches everywhere in the kitchen. She was halfway through a cup of coffee when she opened the water reservoir and spotted a few floating in the water. I opened the machine and the machine was full of them.
Roaches can lay up to 32 eggs/week, and I think a roach mom had at least one good week in the Keurig.
Friend had said he didn’t want it because it was attracting roaches. He claims to not have known it was carrying them.
First time in Singapore I saw a cockroach sitting on the floor, I went to kill it and then discovered there are flying roaches. Hilariousness of course ensued as a fled out of the apartment, screaming like a terrified little boy.
A few years ago my partner and I lived in a slumlord-owned apartment above a crack dealer. We had a storage unit in the basement. For some reason, the only light switch was at the end of a really long and creepy hallway.
When a hurricane hit the area, the whole neighborhood flooded horrifically. The sewers were backed up with trash so nothing drained. There were cars floating down the street. The basement oozed with mildewy dampness for the next few days.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever watched Cloverfield? Do you know that scene where they go down into the subways and turn on the camera’s night vision, only to see a wave of alien creatures rushing at them?
Well, the next time we went down into the basement was exactly like that. That moment felt like a Lovecraftian nightmare as we ran past at least a dozen cockroaches crawling on the cold concrete walls, each one the size of my palm, all lit by the glow of our phone flashlights. Their antennae were like toothpicks. These were the single largest roaches I had ever seen. It was unreal. I have had nightmares about that moment.
Never again.
I was laying in bed and trying to get to sleep. I kept hearing this tapping, or scuttling, noise coming from somewhere in my room, but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Decided it was just old house noises and tried to ignore it. Then something fell from the ceiling and landed on my face. Shouted, slapped at my face, and heard something fall on the floor. Flipped on the light and saw the roach trying to scurry away. Hit it with a book until it was dead. Maybe not the most horrifying, but it was one of the worst experience I’ve had with a roach, so far at least.
I’m sorry, I’m going to one up you. Look away now if squeamish.
I woke up with one climbing into my ear. I ran to the bathroom, bashing into furniture and walls because feeling it wriggle around in my ear threw my sense of balance off so badly. And also, you know, panic. I jumped into the bathtub fully clothed, dropped to hands and knees to put my head under the faucet, and turned the water on full force to flush it out.
This was during college years, during a gap between semesters and I didn’t have an apartment. I was couch surfing at a friends. After that night, I left and lived in my car for a couple of days instead. There was no way I would be able to fall asleep again in that place.
Oof. Advice, coming from experience actually…
If you get a roach crawl into your ear, you can kill it almost instantly by pouring rubbing alcohol into your ear. Now getting it out is a different story, but at least the little demon is dead and gives you time to go see a doctor without it trying to chew through your eardrum.
From my understanding, roaches cannot crawl backwards, so when trapped in such a way they’ll try chewing their way forward…
Don’t ask how I know this, but yeah rubbing alcohol apparently kills them instantly.
The only thing that kept me from trying to claw it out of my head was the fear of the roach tunneling harder as it died. Oof, not sure I would be able to pour alcohol in, worrying death would be any less than instantaneous. And I hope I never have to figure it out.
