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This morning as I was getting ready for work I found myself looking into the beady eyes of a humungous cockroach. After some squealing and donning of rubber yellow gloves I managed to kill the roach with a hammer. There must be a better and cleaner way to exterminate roaches. What options do I have? Also, what is an acceptable level of cohabitation with these buggers? Is it realistic to believe that if the right steps were taken my apartment could be 100% roach free? This is the first cockroach I have ever seen during my 8 months in this apartment.
-Scared to sleep
Ask Gothamist has done battle with roaches before. And it is a battle. For a really bad infestation, you truly have to wage an all-out war, but we believe the war can be won. Even if you just see one roach, it's worth it to take preventitive steps - because roaches breed like crazy and can multiply quickly. Your first step should be a thorough cleaning of your apartment. If you've been hoarding bags from the grocery store, get rid of them - that's how a lot of roaches and eggs find their way into your home. Throw out any cardboard boxes too. Make sure that all of your foodstuffs are sealed in airtight containers - especially dried goods like cereal, flour, etc. Examine all open containers and when in doubt, throw it out.
After thoroughly cleaning you'll want to exterminate. According to this article on Cockroach Elimination by an entomologist at the University of Kentucky, "Homeowners attempting to control cockroaches themselves will find insecticidal baits and boric acid effective and relatively easy to use." Baits are a good first step as they are small, have no odor, and are easy to place around the house. Boric acid is extremely effective if used properly - according to the above article, "For best results, the powder should be applied in a very thin layer barely visible to the naked eye. Piles or heavy accumulations will be avoided by foraging cockroaches much as we would avoid walking through a snow drift." You should probably try a combo of bait and boric acid, focusing on the kitchen and bathroom areas. Baits can be placed on the floor up against the wall, in cabinets, under sinks, etc. Boric acid should be lightly poured along cracks where roaches might enter your apartment. Needless to say you don't want to pour the stuff on your counter tops or put it near your food, although it has a low toxicity to humans and pets.
We also suggest you talk to your landlord and see if he or she is willing to send an exterminoator to your apartment on a regular basis - in some apartment buildings, exterminators come around every month and this seems to prevent the cockroach problem. And if and when you do see an actual roach, we don't know of a better way of killing it than to simply squash the little bugger.
Need advice? E-mail ask(at)gothamist(dot)com.
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Due to potential mess and ickiness from the squish method, I favor flushing them down the toilet.
Maybe you should check out Vice magazine's Killing Roaches Simplified
You cannot win against the roach. They adapt to new chemicals too quickly. If for some reason mankind dies out, and every animal and plant died. The roach will most likely survive.
They always win. Just don't move into a house with paneled walls and don’t leave food out for god's sake.
Either get used to it and do your best to try to "control" the problem or M O V E! The roaches, coming from somewhere, will never go away unless they go away from where they are coming. I don't know if you could really seal off your place.
Put in a drain cover on all open drains (bathtub, sink, etc). The big ones climb up through water drain pipes. A little $2 drain plug/thingie should do it.
avoid purposely stepping on roaches on the street - they could be preggers and you could be tracking the eggs inside your house. not good.
Make peace with the roaches, breed with their women, and in time they will accept you for who you are.
Man, I don't care how big the roach in your apartment is, they don't compare to the ones down in Florida.
Them motherfuckers are huge - about as big as a TV remote. I did my best, setting up baits and keeping the place squeaky clean, but I lived in a pre-war ground floor apartment and there was no way to really keep them out. I pretty much accepted them and treated them as my roommates.
if this is the first you've seen, put out some traps, clean up you place and you may be ok. in my last place, where i was for 3 years, i saw ONE the entire time i was there. i am convinced i brought it in with the purchase of a purse fom a street vendor. . .as it didn't have anyone to mate with, and since i killed it, we did not have a problem after that.
can someone explain to me the difference between roaches and water bugs? they're both big, and i don't want either in my apt...but are there different rules for them?
I went through this last year after buying an apartment. The war can be won with patience and hard work. First, enlist the services of a really good exterminator - I love Pest Away, ask for Jeff (212) 721-2521. They will consult with you about the best methods, but it usually involves sealing and crack and crevice work with birth control/insecticide. Don't rely on over the counter foggers; they make the situation worse. Do take aggressive action as soon as possible and keep up the effort.
if it was a waterbug (1.5-3 inches) simply make sure to close all the drains in the sink/bathtub. That's what I do, and have not seen one since.This was advised to me from an exterminator. those suckers can't live without humidity and water, so that's where they crawl out from.
If it was a roach as in regular cockaroach, you have problems..as there may be more in the walls and they can live anywhere.
I have no idea oprah, but they look even more nasty, and WHITE, and HUGE. They have them in Jamaica. I must've sprayed a whole can of Raid on one and it still didnt die.
I call them super roaches
Have you noticed that even the most hardcore tree-hugging vegan/vegetarians still don't give a damn about killing cockroaches (living creatures)?
i had some "roaches" in my apt recently and my landlord (who i actually really like) was like "roaches or waterbugs" - i told him i didn't give a shit i didn't want either, but apparently i was sposed to know the difference. as long as no one knows i feel better, i've lived here my whole life, felt like it was one of those things that everyone knew but me....
And, by the way, it would have been real easy to find a way scarier, uglier roach picture for this story.
Roaches and waterbugs can mean alot of different things to different people - depends on where you are in the US. Water bugs are specifically big ass, roach looking things that have clear wings, a pointy, beaky mouth, and strong, sizeable arms. They generally live in the hotter, more humid south...that doesn't mean they can't live up here, though. Roaches are just roaches, and I think that the terms roach and waterbug are used to describe the size of the thing you're dealing with, at least in NYC. I've found that people call the smaller ones roaches, and the gigantic ones are called waterbugs...it sounds kinder and gentler than telling you, "Holy shit! You've got some big mother f-ing steriodal cockroaches on your hands, lady!
this stuff is good (cheapest you'll find it):
http://www.cooperseeds.com/viewitem.php3?prod=1073
and roaches have not developed a resistance to the chemical in this product for decades. it is the principal roach insecticide to this day because of this.
First of all, the article is not correct about boric acid. It's fine for dogs, because dogs don't lick their paws as much, but if you have a curious cat, like my roommate has, boric acid should not be used on exposed surfaces where your cat will go. Having your kitten's stomach pumped = bad. And since roaches have a tendency to walk on things a lot, like, say, your plates, glasses, and cups, they're tracking boric acid on your stuff. And you're breathing it in. Gels (combat has one, it comes in a syringe shaped container) is much better for you and your pets because it doesn't get tracked in the same way because it's so much stickier.
Also, you can't seal off your whole apartment, but you can get the big offenders really easily. Get that expanding foam spray stuff, and use it under your sink in the bathroom and kitchen around the exposed pipes that go into the wall. That's the number one place you're going to find roaches living.
Also, don't keep your garbage under your sink. Keep it in a big, light-colored container out in the open. And make sure it is tightly covered.
Havent dealt with roaches specificly, but we did deal with Rats. We looked into exterminating them, and a couple of the same general pricniples apply.
1) For every one you see running around in daylight hours, theres 8 more waiting in the walls to come out at night.
2) Use everything in your power, all at once. They quickly figure out what to avoid, so if it takes you more than a couple of days to get rid of them, further attempts wont work.
3) With the rats, we laid out the traps ahead of time, unset, with no bait, when we decided to lay out the poison, we set all the traps and baited them. Worked like a charm. Not sure if you can apply the same technique to roaches, but it allows them to get used to the presence of something foreign without it being dangerous. Like someone booby trapping your toilet.
Boric acid is amazing. After spending insane amounts of money on roach baits and sprays and fighting with my landlord about regular visits from the exterminator, 1 bottle of boric acid, purchased at duane reade, virtually eliminated our cockroach infestation.
I used the word “virtually” because we moved within a couple of weeks of the initial boric acid application. We were most concerned about taking the cockroaches with us to our new apt. We sprinkled boric acid in every box that we packed.
It seemed to work. No roaches in the new place.
If you live in a rent controlled apartment, your landlord is actually supposed to be responsible for taking care of pests. (In my building, we have an exterminator show up every month. He came this morning, in fact.)
I have ants. I didn't have time to talk to the exterminator this morning (he requires that you be home if he does anything to your apartment, and I had to head to work). But I have weird mutant ants with wings that the traps aren't catching. And I'm really nervous about most conventional bug killing things because I have a small cat who likes to play with pretty much everything (the ant traps are hidden and also taped to the floor). Anyone have ideas how to get rid of the ants? They seem to be coming in through a heating duct.
(Although watching my cat try to catch the mutant flying ants is hilarious. Hours of entertainment.)
i had a roach problem, and researched online, finding the boric acid thing. which worked well. i bought some boric acid, online for about $16/lb. i kept a plastic container (from indian take-out), put the boric (which is a powder) in it along with a few pennies (so it doesn't cake), and then i punched about 20 small holes in the lid with a fork. so i basically made a big boric acid shaker. i applied lightly around all my baseboards, under the sink, toliet, and under the fridge. be sure to check under the fridge, because if it's leaky like mine, water can accumulate in the pan. sure enough, when i looked under the fridge, there were a bunch of baby roaches. but since i've used boric, i haven't seen another (knock on wood).
Boric acid is great. We used to see the occassional roach (from Starbucks bags, usually) but after sprinkling boric acid along the corners of all the walls and around the kitchen wherever they were seen, we see...maybe one every few months?
If you have pets, check with the vet regarding its safety. It can be diluted with water to be used as an eyewash, so it poses no harm to humans.
Since summer's coming (it is! I have faith!), anyone know how to get rid of fruit flies and those big-ass flies that drive you up the wall? They drove me NUTS last summer.
those ants with wings might be termites.
While we're talking about bugs, what are those huge centipede-like bugs with long antennae that run super fast? They're like a mix of spider and centipede, but bigger and meaner looking. Is it just a centipede? Their legs are longer like a spider's.
those are a form of centipede, called "thousand leggers", i think. boric acid will supposedly work for them, silverfish, centipedes, etc. appearantly, anything with a segmented exo-skeleton/joints that runs low to the ground. i guess the boric crystals clog thru their exo and kill the beast ala nerve gas. or something...
Semantic question here, but wouldn't a thousand-legged centipede be a millipede? Anyhow, there's no infestation as of yet, mostly they come in the fall when it's getting colder.
drew, those things eat roaches. i used to kill them whenever i saw them (thankfully not often) because they are so freaky looking. then my husband looked them up in his insect field guide ( i married a science geek)and found that those guys eat roaches--so we no longer kill them if we see them in the house.
we are lucky--we only had roaches once and that was after our LL started renovating their attic. some combat traps and i guess those bugs with all the legs got rid of the roaches right away.
sure, you YUPPIES don't have to worry about roaches because you are CLEAN. live like the PEOPLE. live DIRTY.
Boric acid is useless. I've seen roaches walk right through it and suffer no ill effects.
If there's just one roach, and it's big, it's likely not anything to panic about. It's quite possible that he just wandered in from outside. The problem is when you see the little tiny baby roaches. That means that eggs have hatched in your apartment and you are basically infested.
It is not difficult to be roach free. Take out your trash every night. Do dishes every night, or at the very least, rinse them real good so there is no food on the dishes. Don't leave out food (duh). Don't leave any water build up (roaches love water almost as much as they love food). Don't hoard papers, boxes, bags etc. Buy some Combats and spread them around (more for peace of mind than anything else, although 10 years ago they worked great. But I think roaches are now resistant to them).
I've lived in buildings with major roach problems and I've been roach free.
For the occassional roach, and excellent solution is Glass Plus. Glass Plus is as effective as Raid -- even more so at times -- in my experience. I don't know why, but if you can hit a roach with two or three good gusts, They pretty much slow down and die. Or slow enough for you to squash them. Since you've already sprayed the area, it's a self cleaning solution.
I know it sounds crazy, but I lived in South Georgia for seven years, where we had palmetto bugs, and i've tried everything.
Another good alternate, but a hell on clean up, is spray mount.
No,no, NO!!! Get a cat, or two cats, and let them run the roaches to ground, them whack 'em with a shoe with a flat sole (no flip-flops)...hit 'em hard and savor the crackling sound of roach guts hitting the floor...
Oops, got a bit carried away there, we have LOTS of the buggers here in New Orleans. The best solution (besides the kitty safari) is to move UP, at least two stories...and pray...
If you want to kill a roach but don't want to get too close, just spray kitchen cleaner on it; after a bunch of sprays, they flip over and die quickly. Of course, this is only good for the one random roach, and doesn't cure a real problem.
Hairspray works too.
Sealing up my walls and doorframes with caulk has made a world of difference. I mean, caulk under the floor boards and around each door through the WHOLE apartment. Anywhere they can crawl into my apartment I've tried to seal. They were coming in under my front door, and I put a stick on door sealing thing on there. It's necessary if your building is infested and you have a few neighbors who are slobs and don't care.
boric acid kills through dehydration. it's not an instant kill thing.
How ironic(al), I just saw my first (knock on wood) giant cockroach in my apt. after 3 years. This sucker was comin' in through a space in the front door jam and I've had only minor bug sightings - including the sporadic aforementioned long-legged, hairy, creepy things. Good to know they're roach eaters (but how?). My knee-jerk reaction from growing up in humid Houston, TX, where these monsters thrive, was 1) broom: for its close proximity and to diminish use of chemicals, and 2) a can of Hot Shot to finish him off. The broom approach requires a firm strike or two and maims or kills while avoiding the dreaded squish (last resort for me). This guy was big and strong, so I put him out of our misery with the spray. (Also repeating, "Die, M.F., DIE." seems to help.)
There are some good long-term pest control solutions here. But if you come face-to-face with a roach, I sort of agree with the people spraying kitchen cleaners at them. I lived in Japan, where I first saw flying roaches. I wasn't as scared of them until I saw them fly.
Someone told me to mix water and dishwashing liquid in a spray bottle. Shake and spray. I don't know what it is, but the soap does something to their system and they can't stand it. They go into death throes and die after a few excruciating seconds. It's hard to watch, but it's clean and leaves a lemony-fresh smell.
G-D forbid you live near the incinerator room, you'll be doomed.
Wait!!! Where the heck do you buy Boric Acid?! Everyone's talked about it but where do you get it? Thanks!
I need desperate help!! I live in a tiny studio apartment in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Been here a year and can't afford to move. I constantly battle roaches (and I'm extremely clean).
I have been so sickened by them that I haven't cooked in a year (been living off of cold cereal and other dry food), I store everything in my fridge(plates,pots,pans,cutlery), and I sleep with my head covered (I've awakened to a roach on my bed 3 times!!). I use roach bait, boric acid, I never leave water or food anywhere, and I've caulked. I know there are other places that they are coming in that I can't get to (eg. behind stove, fridge, etc.)
Can you reccomend the best service to have my entire apartment caulked and treated without emptying my pockets?
I can't live like this anymore. Haven't had a restful sleep in ages. Please help!!
Blessings, Andria.
We have these bugs, my husband calls them water bugs, and i say they are roaches. Some of them have wings, and the others don't. We only see them about two or three times a month, and then we don't see them for a while. I am a neat freak, so my house is spotless at all times. Do we have a problem?
jen in ohio
I have the same problem...very clean, haven't slept without a light on in 4 days...goin crazy...and get this...i'm pretty sure my LL won't exterminate!! SHe runs the house for her mother and called mom to get clearance to exterminate and she was furious "dont you dare spend that money, get traps and baits..that's waht we do in Florida!!!" well DUH ther's no point to extermination in FL>...but in CT there is!!!! Doesn't she have to deal with it in a 3 family house?? For me its'a health hazzard, i have asthma and allergies, not to mention a full on anxiety attack when i see them and haven't slept much in a week...i;ve only lived here 2 months and hope i can break the lease due to health reasons and still get my sec dep back if she doesnt exterminate~ ugh!!!
Folks, most of your roach and bed bug problems will be solved if u use the company I found. Pest Away Exterminating. They were voted BEST IN NY, by NY magazine, and every otehr refernce I checked. They were right. Ask for Jeff.
Peace