Cockroach, Eeeee!

That's the reaction of many of us, isn't it? My hairs stand on end when I see a cockroach. It's a very awful feeling when that blooming thing flies and sits on my hand or even worse, the face! I try to run away and I get so restless. I run for my gun - a wash-bottle with kerosene with a tiny nozzle, made by removing the ball from a ball-point pen's tip. I shoot kerosene on this brown monster and it is dead in a couple of minutes.

The cockroach is an amazing animal. It can survive the worst and extreme conditions- it can survive near furnaces or in Antarctica and it can eat almost anything or even nothing for survival. Once when I was making the Iron-Box (for pressing clothes) ready with fire, I heard a crackling noise inside. After the Iron was pretty hot, I was surprised to see a C'roach escape through the vent, as if nothing had happened. Such is its adaptibility. That's why it has not evolved over millions of years!!!

They are such creepy things, yes! My first experience with really big ones was when we went to visit my SIL in Alabama. MAN, the bugs get big down south. They have these things called palmetto bugs (I think) and they are large flying cockroaches. Ugh!!!

Oh, man, Dinu, you're not kidding! If, God forbid, Mama Earth was ever subjected to nuclear war, the only things left would be cockroaches driving Dodge Darts.

Wingnut! That sounds like something Click and Clack, the Tappett Brothers would say! (NPR radio, 10 a.m. (eastern time) on Saturday mornings ... they're a HOOT!)

Hey, GrannyL! I think that came from DH being a classic car nut and telling me how indestructible the Darts are. ;-) I don't listen to NPR, but have seen an article or two by Click and Clack somewhere ~ maybe one of DH's magazines? They ARE funny!

I thought about Car Talk, too! For the uninitiated, or if you just miss 'em, go to this http://cartalk.cars.com/ for their website.

Dinu, If you want a sure fire way to kill roaches that costs only pennies purchase a 1 lb. plastic container of boric acid at your local dollar store. Open a can of condensed milk and put it in a plastic container ( cottage cheese or something with a lid. Stir the boric acid into the condensed milk to form a stiff paste. Using milk lids or juice bottle lids as containers, fill them using a popcycle stick or plastic knife. Dispose of the stick or knife after use. Set the lids under and behind stove, ref., and other furnature. Place in the backs of cabinets or any out of the way place. Before long, no more roaches also no messy powder to clean up. Boric acid $2 lb.--con. milk .50. Does not take much of either.

It has been reported that roach eggs were found in a near frozen state in some ancient city, and were thousands of years old. When brought out, they soon hatched as if there had been no delay. Neither prolonged freezing nor extreme heat will kill them. What chance have we? In an entomology class, we learned that for every roach you see in your home, there are at least 100 more you don't see. Further, if you poison them, others will feast on the carcasses and subsequently die, but before they die they will lay a final crop of eggs, and the young that result will have a certain level of immunity to the poison that killed the female that laid the eggs. So you must alternate poisons to get even a modicum of control.

Yeah, you're right, Aimee. Ugh. We saw a documentary about roaches on either Discovery or The Learning Channel, and they talked about that. They said people still want to use products like Raid spray, despite their ineffectiveness, because they want to *see* the roach die.

Oh, man, Aimee! That's scary!!!!!! And even more of any argument for getting rid of them the natural way ~ wolf spiders and praying mantises. Gobble gobble! Mom had a bad case of them when we were little kids (Daddy had just moved in a used trailer house for us to live in at the time). She told us kids to bring ANY and ALL praying mantises to her so she could let them go under the kitchen sink. Haven't seen a roach since. Pretty cool, huh?

THAT IS REALLY NEAT. WHAT IS A WOLF SPIDER?

Here's what the ones around here look like, Busybee:
http://www.esb.utexas.edu/philjs/stengl/images/Rabida.jpg
http://urbanentomology.tamu.edu/arthropods.html#southernhouse
Their webs are for shelter and not for catching food ~ they do that by going after the little beasties, hence the name "wolf" spider. They have a nasty sounding name, but they're harmless...unless you're a roach!

Big hairy creepy spiders! I appreciate what they *do*, but I sure dislike having one get on me or surprise me!

Busybee, thanks for the info. We first use flour to attract the monsters for a couple of days and the third day, boric acid is mixed with it. I would try condensed milk next time and that will be this summer when all those creepy fellows come out.
Aimee, that is an interesting and scary little statistic -1 seen:100 unseen! Sometimes, we have to smash them up with a broom when there is no time for using any other weapon and I hate to do it myself for obvious reasons. I have seen some "brave" people smash them up with their feet! EEEE !

Oh, yuck!

...I don't care how ya gotta kill 'em...ya let one get away and ya end up with hundreds and thousands.....kill the little beasties anyway ya can...

"eyes"

When I was a single Mom the first apartment I moved into with my boys was full of cockroaches... I didn't know what they were till a friend told me they were not beatles...lol I was terrified. I couldn't sleep for days afraid they would crawl on me in my sleep and I lied to the boys telling them that they were beatles so they wouldn't tell their father I moved them into a cockroach infested Apt. I'd get up in the middle of the night with a bottle of spray and slink around the Apt. looking for them.. stalking them.
Within a month I no longer could not sleep although I did move all our beds away from the walls... I became so hateful and angry towards the little buggers that one night while I was up late working, I reached for my water glass and right underneath it not a foot away from me was one of the little b@#tards... without even thinking I shot my hand out a smashed it as hard as I could. I didn't even bat an eye. I guess what I'm saying is that they are nasty, creepy, disgusting bugs that give you the creeps until killing them becomes a personal mission with a vengence.
On a lighter note; I am so glad I no longer have to live in that enviroment. And apparently the children knew I was lieing all along. They knew what a cockroach was even before I did! lol

Gwydion, I'm glad for you! The cockroach carries more disease than any other insect. I once moved into a rental house where previous tenants just accepted their presence, so they were everywhere, and I couldn't stand the sight of them. Like you, I would get up at night and turn on the lights and see them everywhere, not even afraid of the light. I bought a lot of insect spray cans, and spent hours every night spraying them in the kitchen and bath. They would come flying out of nowhere and divebomb me, I would stomp them and keep spraying. I hired an exterminator, but for the cost, it wasn't effective enough, so I bought the bombs at the store and treated the house and even under the house. I probably used a lifetime supply of poisons every week. We lived there for over 2 years, and I never really gained control. When we moved, I rented a trailer and kept it a month, so I could keep our clothes and books outside until I treated them individually before bringing them into the new house. I left behind a wonderful old gas stove, washer and dryer because I didn't think I would ever be able to get them all out. One egg would start it all over again. Nothing escaped my spray cans, every single stick of furniture got it from all angles before being brought into the house. It was actually months before I stopped the madness. Then one night, I brought a bag home from the store and a roach crawled out. I almost lost it, I was hysterical! That was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and any town on a river is likely to have a problem with them. I hate to think of the poisons I've unleashed on the environment in my attempts to live roach-free. I despise the filthy little critters.

Here, a chalk-stick-like product is in the market and all we have to do is to draw 3 parallel lines with it where those buggers move about. Getting their legs into contact with those 'chemical lines' would paralize them and then they would die off. I finished two buggers last night with my kerosene jet.
http://www.museums.org.za/bio/insects/cockroaches/
The one on the left is common here.

This message was edited Monday, Jan 28th 1:20 AM

I am so happy we don't have cockroaches here. We only have the silverfishes (Lepisma saccharina) here sometimes.. http://www.bio-chart.com/mm/Silberfisch.jpg - Yuck.

Evert, that's enviable!!

LOL =)

ALthough the silverfishes are pretty neat.. they look funny, and they're little.

Dinu, of course here has been cockroaches long time ago.. but I ´haven't seen any here. When we were in greece there was cockroaches in the toilet! Yuckie...

I think I didn't see any in India :)

We once moved into what we thought was a great duplex apartment. Then I turned on the oven and as it heated up, thousands of roaches went scurrying up the wall. Talk about disgusting. We tried to stick it out and wait for management to get rid of them, but nothing seemed to work. I even sprayed one with an egg sack attached to it and left the egg sack sitting around to see if it would hatch. Sure enough, it hatched, but they didn't get very far. The residual poison killed them. We moved out of there within two months. No amount of lost security deposit was worth living like that.

Oh what horrific stories you do tell!! I hate them with a passion. I never saw one in England but during my travels I encountered them most of the time. The first in Malta - sitting on a balcony eating breakfast and this flying creature joined me at the table - I nearly died!! It's bad enough they exist, but fly!! Too much!! The worst experience was when we were stationed in Cyprus and had just rented a brand new house with sliding doors to all the rooms. My kids were small. A babe in arms and a toddler!! I heard my baby crying in the night, went to check her out, slid the door open and out scurried hundreds of these demons. Every sliding door harboured them!! I found two crawling over my son!! We moved out of there in a hurry - into an older place. We were told it was the disturbance of the ground when the house built that caused this mass intrusion into the home!! Another incident I found completely revolting was when buying food in a local outdoor market in Singapore. The ground of the market was always wet and there were many drains which took the water away. I saw a young woman pick up a cockroach, pull off the legs and give them to her little boy to eat!! Yikes!!

Ewww Louisa, that story is by far the most horrific of all! That is the stuff nightmares are made of.

Eeeeyak! I get an inexplicable horrible feeling when I read such stories about those bloody demons.

lol Dinu - I never did get over that!! The eating of them I mean!!

Good grief, wouldn't it make you sick, considering that they carry more disease than almost any other creature? Here, that would be grounds for removing the child from her custody, definitely abuse.

They could have been really hungry Aimee - oh I don't know why else she would give her child such poison!!

I've heard that the Chinese fry them -also as a pickle -and eat them! yacckk!