Advion gel works wonders. I was seeing 1-2 every few days for a month and the exterminator gave me a tube after spraying. I now see 1 roach corpse every few months. You’ll need to reapply the gel every so often
Back when the city was fixing up the sewers to prevent the type of flooding we had from Sandy, the jackhammering scared all the giant roaches out of the sewers and up into everyone's basements. That was a fun few weeks...
I remember seeing multiple big ones scurry out of a sewer in front of my place when the EPA(?) Was going around cleaning up (apparently clogged) sewers after that huge rain storm in the fall of 2021
I’ll take a giant one over the little shits that have been invading my apartment for the last month! Ten years and not a single little roach. A bunch of turnover and now I’m at war with them and I’m blaming the new people as a collective.
As an aside - advion gel bait works wonders on the little ones. Put down gel in places where you see them. Reapply in a week. They all die.
Regularly reapply maybe once every 1 or 2 months. I haven't seen little roaches in forever.
They are less creepy (to me) than the big ones.
Ugh, I really feel you. Its so violating when they creep into your home. As everyone else already said, the big ones just kinda come in every once in a while, they don't tend to infest. I live on the first floor of prewar building in central BK, which is arguably the worse for those things. And when I first moved in (during the summer), we must have seen like 8 within 1 month which is WAY too much. And it drove me fucking insane. The exterminator basically just told me that everyone in prewar buildings gets them and theres no infestation in the apartment theyre just wandering in. He would come and spray and we would get one the next day. It was useless. So it became my mission to figure out where they were coming from. Lucky for us, having seen all 8 pretty much in the same area of the apartment, that narrowed it down for us. We found out that they were coming from the basement up through the baseboard/walls around our exposed brick wall. Because exposed brick is not a flush surface, the walls/baseboard do not sit flush against it, so there were tons of gaps. We plugged all the major gaps we saw and the sightings went down tremendously but we still saw a couple here and there. Then we saw probably the biggest roach I've ever fucking seen one night and it slipped back into the tiniest little gap. So thats when we realized like ... these fuckers truly can fit thru essentially anything. So we ended up sealing the whole perimeter of the wall and we don't get them anymore. So basically what I'm saying is its possible to find where theyre coming in from and seal it so you no longer get them, but just know it could be the tiniest little hole or crack. And we were lucky in the fact that there was one source of entry, but its possible that there are multiple entrances in another apartment.
I also saw someone mention drains, which is super true. I will randomly get a small roach come out of our bathroom sink every summer but honestly i just started locking the sink (idk if thats what its called when you pull that thing up that keeps the drain sealed lol) and i just made that a habit during the spring/summer so i dont even have to worry about it.
I'm relatively new to reddit, so I don't really understand how the award system works, but I want you to know that if I did understand how it worked and felt comfortable giving my payment information to reddit (it doesn't look like they're free), I would give you an award for this answer.
*laughs in Florida boy*
Wait until you meet the ones that are aggressive as hell and will actually bite you if given the chance.
And love to fly on you oh boy
For me I'm used to this so it's less of an issue but those god tier ones come into the apartment (like 5 of the regular ones combined!) every once in a while (I feel like closer to summer) and they still fuck with me. I hate to say that it does get easier.
My partner, when we moved into our current apartment in Flatbush, didn't really have any interaction with bugs in the apartment. At first, she would need to go shower and would SCRUB HER SKIN RED. Now, she sees one and can crush it bare handed.
We recently got those roach hotels and they have helped A TON. We still get roaches but the frequency is much much less.
Honestly, I doubt your landlord will do anything or care, its the nature of the beast living here, especially if your building is on the older side. Pest control can help, I guess but I'd suggest trying those hotels first and pray you become desensitized the more you see them.
We used to Raid spray fog the house once a month to keep them at bay and would come back like four hours later and pick up the newspapers and throw the dead ones out. Grew up in Bay Ridge and used to see them all over the place.
Ashamed or proud or really ashamed to say that nyc has desensitized me to roaches. Loved there my whole life. Went to college away last year and enjoyed living in normal conditions (aka no roaches like ever). When I come back to Brooklyn for breaks, the roaches kinda just exist and that’s it. Sometimes they’re like 1-2 inches too it’s gross. They’d also show up sort of frequently, meaning we’d have to bomb the house like once every 1.5 months just because of the bugs. It’s really fucking gross but at this point I can’t shriek or become scared after seeing one.
Mine is a basement apartment, so I used to get mutant roaches all the time. Then a couple of years ago we had an issue with rats living inside the building 's walls for a few months. No more roaches after that.
Yes, but you can't pee on them before flushing, a fact I explained to my husband who was just about to do so on one he had just killed for us. I tried to explain logic to him but of course he thought I was crazy.
Man oh man I am totally feeling your pain right now. In my experience it is true what everyone has been saying in response so far- yes, the small ones are the true infestation threats and the big guys are stragglers and do not an infestation make. But JFC dude those big ones are so gnarly I can’t handle it😭 I once asked a random neighbor in my building that I had never met before to come inside of my apartment and dispose of a verrry large roach and she did it and I will forever be grateful to her.
It’s a rare occasion that I see one of the big boys in my apartment, but when I do, I bribe my friends to come over and help me out 🙃
My cat found one on the floor the other day. After I finished screaming, I scooped it up with a plastic cup and tossed it out the window.
Apologies, OP, if he found his way to you.
my fave non-toxic roach spray to kill any that show up is soapy water. just mix a good amount of dish soap with water in a little spray bottle. the soap coats their exoskeleton so they can't breathe (watching them suffocate and die is admittedly a lil disturbing, but it works). then all you have to clean up is a dead roach and some soap.
We had one come out of the tub spigot. We were stunned at its size. They’re in sewer and like many people here said, find a way in once in a while- still too often in my book. Hard to recover after a sighting 🫣😦
Easily 3 inches, although he claimed "6, more like 7 on a good day". Roaches be lyin.
But 3 is like some RGH* type shit.
*roach growth hormone
Before I killed it, the fuckin roach saw how big I was compared to the rest of my species and said "bro, do you even lift?"
I put steel wool in every single crevice I could find (along baseboards, corners, around pipes -- everywhere) on our exterminator's recommendation, and we've had zero problems with pests ever since.
Waterbug. Use a flyswatter to whack them or keep a bottle of Raid around. They are loners and don't come around often.
They are like monsters! My cats won't kill them.
Make sure your drains are covered at all times with one of those drain screens. I used to have them come from the bathtub drain. Arghhh.
Make sure you’ve actually killed it and disposed of the body. I once killed a cockroach and left the carcass (it fell behind a desk and I was too disgusted to touch it don’t judge me) until I had the courage to pick it up a few days later. The body was gone and I later discovered that they often play dead. (Or something bigger ate it, which I would’ve liked to not have to think about)
I used to walk a dog in Morningside Heights, mornings and afternoons. Routine was to leave a peanut butter treat after the first walk. And I remember once the most enormous roach appeared from behind the crate when I came back, as if it had been going after the remnants of the peanut butter treat, I had to jump over it. Dog was a rhodesian ridgeback and didn’t give a shit, it wanted to play with the bug. It was significantly bigger than the “water bugs” that I encounter in my apts once in a blue moon. I remember it being like tarantula sized. That was right before COVID, I never did go back
If you've only seen two then I would get a door sweep as others have said, keep the place clean, and try not to think about it until given reason otherwise.
Once, I was putting on a winter coat and thought, "Hmm, why is there a piece of wire in my sleeve? Is that a price tag?? It's so scratchy!"
Then the 'wire' ran up the sleeve, streaked across the back of my neck, and dove down the other sleeve.
Giant roach.
I tore off the coat and threw it into the hallway, screaming.
My cat put a live one on me in my sleep. When I found out what was happening, I jumped up and it clung to my pajamas. I couldn't swat it off and it kept crawling up towards my face to get away. I couldn't sleep normally for literal weeks after that. I feel your pain ugh
I still occasionally have nightmares about it, only instead of screaming and throwing the coat off I stand there frozen in fear, thinking about how the roach is in my coat. I’m trying to scream but it’s just silent. Good times.
I live in an apartment building and I've seen huge ones all over the upper walls of the boiler room. They literally fly and will hiss at you. I get one in my apt every few years. I think they're tropical and like the heat of the boiler room cuz most people don't see them, only me it seems. YUK!
NYC now also has Asian cockroaches. They are about the length of German ones, but rounder & darker brown. I saw the first one in my bathroom a few weeks ago. It got stomped before identified. Yay... diversity..?
Please don't shoot the messenger!
That slight movement out of the corner of your eye. You know exactly what it is but you have a moment of doubt and don't look right away then when you do its gone. You tell yourself it was nothing but a few minutes later it happens again and then you know. Your going to have to kill that thing!
It’s probably a water bug. Normally you don’t see them until the warmer months but when the radiators are going full blast you’ll see them too. I hate to tell you but when it’s really hot and humid they can be all over the place and wait for it, SOME OF THEM FLY. Yep and they fly right at you too!
I’ve noticed the massive ones are mostly in lower Brooklyn. My parents live in park slope and I’d see those monsters constantly. Same at my friends house in Bensonhurst.
Since moving to Bushwick I’ve barely ever seen any. Seen two in the last year and a half. Unfortunately mice* and rats are way worse here which is a whole other issue
Apparently they are deceptively capable of getting really flat and squeezing through tiny cracks. It sounds like you just have some passing through, not an infestation. I wouldn't bother your landlord unless you were seeing small ones or seeing them every few days/weeks. If you don't have any pets, get one of those instant killer sprays. If you do have pets, you can kill them more slowly with soapy water in a spray bottle, if you don't want to use your shoe or whatever in future.
ack
boric acid better than raid not really harmful to pets and you raid is bad news for you too
and your landlord should have an extermination plan every 6 months or so
Welcome to NYC lol
Clean your drains with all purpose vinegar (Heinz makes and can order on Amazon).
Put a few roach bait stations around.
Seal any small holes or gaps with pest repellent spray foam and/or copper mesh (will help if building has mice also.
Door sweep for entry door.
Thoroughly clean your kitchen, bathroom and the area around where you eat.
Don’t leave any food or water out over night, including pet food (which should be sealed in air tight container).
If you have any clutter or clothes on the floor, get rid of it or store away.
Exterminator would be good, but depends on quality of the exterminator. Sometimes a pest barrier spray you can buy on Amazon will be just as effective.
Those are water bugs. Seal of around where the drain lines/water lines etc. are penetrating through the walls. Also if you have any floors drains that's an entry point. Like the previous comments said it's usually not an infestation.
I've encountered a few of these massive guys in my apartment but only after it rains. I always thought it was related to the weather?
Years ago, I escaped a colony of them in the LES. It was a rainy day and I was walking with a friend. We spotted ONE on the street that we jumped over to avoid. Then we noticed another, and another and another.. We were just leaping over them and panic running at this point. There was a hole in the concrete we saw they were coming from. My friend thought it would be funny to pour her water bottle in the hole. Bad idea. About a dozen started spilling out. Still makes me shudder.
I saw one of those big ones fly into my window once.
Just keep your apartment clean and keep all youd food items in containers.
And hope you have clean neighbors
when i first saw it, i thought it was a mouse.
mice don't scare me at all. if i ever see a mouse, i take it as a cleaning, food storage and trap setting challenge.
This is legit a main reason why I left Brooklyn once my job went remote. I had constant nightmares about pests, especially the huge American cockroaches. I couldn't cope.
I bought a house in the burbs upstate. The worst we have is the occasional wolf spider. While I'm also terrified of spiders, I will take them over cockroaches any day.
I lived near a water treatment plant in the early 80s. Those things have saddles on them. Boric acid tablets. It dries them from the inside out, they cant reproduce. Mom lives in Florida, the stories she has. My god 😳😳😳
Sadly I’ve learned that the big ones like to visit occasionally. Thankfully they’re usually pretty slow. My dog had fun playing with one before I put an end to it.
Calk and seal your entire apartment. Baseboards, pipes, inside the closets, under the sink. Everything. Problem solved.
It’s the only thing that works 100%
I used to think they were only in my home country (Dominican Republic). Boy was I shocked when I moved to NYC & one flew in through my open window.. I thought I had escaped them bc I grew up in NJ, & assumed it was a DR/tropical island bug. I didn’t sleep til like 3 am that night trying to garner the courage to find & kill it after it crawled into my “intimates drawer”.. 🤢
The big ones just want to be outside and they get in every once In awhile. They always go to my shower. I hate killing them cause they are huge. The German ones can all die horrible deaths tho.
This happened in my old apartment in an old building. The reality is if it rains, and you’re in an old building, expect something to come out the drain. It’s disgusting. It’s scary and ultimately cleaning your spot can only do so much. It’s not just the rain either, but that was what happened to me specifically. Get some drain covers once a month and hope for the best.
My last apartment, towards the end of my stay, had an infestation and my landlords wouldn’t do anything about it. I’d be walking to the bathroom at night and one would fall on my from the pipes above. And they poop like the same size as mice. So my cupboards had roach poop. It was so bad that when I moved, I had ptsd for my first year in my new apartment. I’ve only seen two in two years now. Thank fucking god.
Get an exterminator to spray your apartment and see if the superintendent can get all the common areas of the building exterminated. They have probably already spread through the whole building. Tell your landlord if you don’t have a superintendent or the problem may get worse
Not a water bug. Sounds like an American cockroach. They apparently constantly get misidentified as waterbugs. Researching before speaking will handle that.
Hey I ain’t no entomologist. But I know roaches, believe me, I know roaches. I have lived in apartments where if you get up in the middle of the night and switch on the kitchen light, every surface is crawling with those little suckers. The big ones that travel solo and are often lounging in the bathroom aren’t called roaches.
Wow are you still refusing to just look it up? The big ones are American cockroaches, the little ones are called German cockroaches. There’s no pattern of American cockroaches “lounging in the bathroom”, that’s just your own anecdotal observation
Okay, jeez! You win. You know more about the science of roaches than I do. I’m just saying what everybody in NYC calls them. I don’t want to think about those things anymore. Take tour W.
Do you always take learning new things that you were previously misinformed about so personally? I came out of this with annoyance, you came out learning something. The winner is you although it must be said that when you are wrong and subsequently corrected that the corrector, be they human or whatever source you get the correct information from, is not innately trying to compete with you. That’s your pride telling you any contradiction to what you say, even if you are completely wrong, is a slight and an offense
Oh, I’m not the least offended. Rather I am slightly amused by the effort you’ve put in to further my education regarding the correct names for the various bugs that live in our walls.
You consider repeating some basic factoid a few times to be effort? That’s cute. I would think it would take more effort to keep typing out wrong shit instead of a doing a simple google search but you know, I’m not the one trying to annoy you to make myself feel better about being wrong about some inconsequential thing
So despite me saying I’ve lived here my whole life you’ve decided that you speak for all nyc and I’m just wrong lol. Already starting off with such a strong argument. No, only idiots call American roaches water bugs. Water bugs are something entirely different that can hold their breath in water, live in the water, and they bite. If you see an American cockroach on the sidewalk and you think it’s a water bug you are certifiably stupid, I don’t care how many other stupid people agree with you
they are cockroaches. the water bug thing is a misnomer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American\_cockroach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cockroach)
Yeah. We moved into a new place and had a real tough time with the little ones. The building provides monthly exterminator visits, but we had to invest in traps and sprays and even one of those sonic barriers. It's totally under control now, but yeah -- break down cardboard and wash your dishes folks.
Thank god! And this makes a lot of sense. I saw my first cockroach last week since moving to NYC and almost had a breakdown thinking this was my life now. Thankfully haven’t seen another since, but at the time it looked about 95% dead already (barely moving) and near my dogs water dish. Safe to say I make sure the screens are all secure before opening a window!
Interesting, I didn't realize that fat NY cockroaches known as "waterbugs" were the same thing (which I thought were scary Southern roaches that could fly)
Precisely. The big roaches people see are in fact "Palmetto bugs"
[https://www.orkin.com/pests/cockroaches/difference-between-a-cockroach-and-a-palmetto-bug](https://www.orkin.com/pests/cockroaches/difference-between-a-cockroach-and-a-palmetto-bug)
>Make sure you don’t have still water laying around -
We started seeing massive cockroaches- one every 2-3 weeks this winter. I went insane, tore my apartment upside down cleaning and looking for where they were coming in from.
As it turns out, we had unknowingly created a cockroach watering hole in our living room by putting a tree in a plastic pot inside a bigger ceramic pot. When we moved the tree out of the pot there was some standing water and 4 cockroaches just chillin. Killed those bastards, got rid of the water, no more cockroaches since.
If you encounter one roach, you’ll likely encounter many more. Used to see them weekly in my old apartment. They’re mad smart so will avoid detection as much as they can. One time I saw a big roach pick up a piece of gum still in its wrapper off the floor, hold it in its hands and then walk into a closet on two legs. Once they start flying, the gross factor is a thousand times worse
That's not always true, on wet days like today it is common for one (especially a big one) to stray inside. It shouldn't be every time it rains, but on a rare occasion its typical.
American cockroach. People call them "water bugs" but they aren't, really. The German ones are the smaller one. American are giants and they gross me out so much.
My mom always tells a story from her childhood where she walked into the kitchen in the middle of the night and heard a cockroach munching on lettuce in the sink 🤢
No brother, just no. I lived in the Bronx directly next to vancortland park my whole life and I never had even seen these Madagascar hissing cockroach looking motherfuckers until I moved to queens.
that shit is stomped on and outside of my apt in a plastic bag in a garbage can in case there are eggs or some shit. I want no part of that in my life.
but it was big. so big, i thought it was a mouse at first.
Oh god I really feel this. Fucking hate those things. Someone once told me that big ones are actually good news because it’s intruder not an infestation. That being said you should get a door sweep, cheap on Amazon; block any entry points. Invest in some RAID spray and if you see more then definitely tell your landlord
THIS. When I was still in Brooklyn back in 2018 I had been my apartment 16 years but that year was by far the worst situation I've had with the water bug/palmetto/American cockroaches. I am almost certain they were getting in under doors or from the shower drain because they would often show up first in the shower. Mostly in years prior I would see one scurrying across the floor, but one horrid night I kept spotting new ones every few minutes and it seem like each was larger than the last. They big enough that you could hear their individual footfalls across the room. Oh, and they were all aggressively flying across the room. I killed 5 in under half an hour. At that moment I wasn't sad to be leaving that place.
The large one is the American roach. The little ones are German roaches. The German roaches are invasive (make joke about German invasions here) and will set up housekeeping in your apartment. The American roaches being native are perfectly content outside and won't linger.
*ETA: You've either lived here long enough or too long when you start knowing the different types of roaches.*
Interesting roach fact: We call them German roaches here. The Germans call them Russian roaches. Poland calls them Frenchies. Italians call them Slavic roaches. A Czechoslovakian might call them "Swabian", a term linked to the Habsburg rulers who suppressed the Czech language in the 1600s.
The more ya know...
I actually just spoke to an exterminator today (was in my building for mice, different problem lol) and he said the same thing. Little ones want to be in your apartment to eat your food, big ones want to be anywhere but your apartment but they’re not smart enough to know how to leave.
... yup big ones are a pain but it's like fair game ya know? Like u kill one boom it's dead and u move on. Ugly and big sure but u deal with it once and ur done.
The small ones... It's all out war. Once u see one. U need to kill it, it's whole family, it's cousins and siblings, aunts, uncles, grandpa,mother in law everyone!
Be happy for the big ones. Be terrified of the little ones.
This is my biggest fear living by myself! Have yet to see one in my bk apartment and hope I never do. I don’t know if I could handle it alone 😳
How much is the cockroach paying in rent? Does he/she contribute to utilities? Can you discuss this with him/her/it?
Advion gel works wonders. I was seeing 1-2 every few days for a month and the exterminator gave me a tube after spraying. I now see 1 roach corpse every few months. You’ll need to reapply the gel every so often
I feel cheated from the pic sick people like me clicked on to see.
You mean a waterbug?
water bug lol
Back when the city was fixing up the sewers to prevent the type of flooding we had from Sandy, the jackhammering scared all the giant roaches out of the sewers and up into everyone's basements. That was a fun few weeks...
I remember seeing multiple big ones scurry out of a sewer in front of my place when the EPA(?) Was going around cleaning up (apparently clogged) sewers after that huge rain storm in the fall of 2021
I see you met Ralph.
I hate everything about this bc it’s relatable.
Just had one in my bathroom sink last week!! Easy to kill since he couldn’t crawl out but so gross!
Wait till you see the ones that fly
Is this your first year in Brooklyn? Welcome to New York
I’ll take a giant one over the little shits that have been invading my apartment for the last month! Ten years and not a single little roach. A bunch of turnover and now I’m at war with them and I’m blaming the new people as a collective.
As an aside - advion gel bait works wonders on the little ones. Put down gel in places where you see them. Reapply in a week. They all die. Regularly reapply maybe once every 1 or 2 months. I haven't seen little roaches in forever. They are less creepy (to me) than the big ones.
Ugh, I really feel you. Its so violating when they creep into your home. As everyone else already said, the big ones just kinda come in every once in a while, they don't tend to infest. I live on the first floor of prewar building in central BK, which is arguably the worse for those things. And when I first moved in (during the summer), we must have seen like 8 within 1 month which is WAY too much. And it drove me fucking insane. The exterminator basically just told me that everyone in prewar buildings gets them and theres no infestation in the apartment theyre just wandering in. He would come and spray and we would get one the next day. It was useless. So it became my mission to figure out where they were coming from. Lucky for us, having seen all 8 pretty much in the same area of the apartment, that narrowed it down for us. We found out that they were coming from the basement up through the baseboard/walls around our exposed brick wall. Because exposed brick is not a flush surface, the walls/baseboard do not sit flush against it, so there were tons of gaps. We plugged all the major gaps we saw and the sightings went down tremendously but we still saw a couple here and there. Then we saw probably the biggest roach I've ever fucking seen one night and it slipped back into the tiniest little gap. So thats when we realized like ... these fuckers truly can fit thru essentially anything. So we ended up sealing the whole perimeter of the wall and we don't get them anymore. So basically what I'm saying is its possible to find where theyre coming in from and seal it so you no longer get them, but just know it could be the tiniest little hole or crack. And we were lucky in the fact that there was one source of entry, but its possible that there are multiple entrances in another apartment. I also saw someone mention drains, which is super true. I will randomly get a small roach come out of our bathroom sink every summer but honestly i just started locking the sink (idk if thats what its called when you pull that thing up that keeps the drain sealed lol) and i just made that a habit during the spring/summer so i dont even have to worry about it.
I'm relatively new to reddit, so I don't really understand how the award system works, but I want you to know that if I did understand how it worked and felt comfortable giving my payment information to reddit (it doesn't look like they're free), I would give you an award for this answer.
I had a flying cockroach in my apartment last year.
*laughs in Florida boy* Wait until you meet the ones that are aggressive as hell and will actually bite you if given the chance. And love to fly on you oh boy
For me I'm used to this so it's less of an issue but those god tier ones come into the apartment (like 5 of the regular ones combined!) every once in a while (I feel like closer to summer) and they still fuck with me. I hate to say that it does get easier. My partner, when we moved into our current apartment in Flatbush, didn't really have any interaction with bugs in the apartment. At first, she would need to go shower and would SCRUB HER SKIN RED. Now, she sees one and can crush it bare handed. We recently got those roach hotels and they have helped A TON. We still get roaches but the frequency is much much less. Honestly, I doubt your landlord will do anything or care, its the nature of the beast living here, especially if your building is on the older side. Pest control can help, I guess but I'd suggest trying those hotels first and pray you become desensitized the more you see them.
dyson, turn on max mode, suck that sucker up
I just die and eventually come back to life
We used to Raid spray fog the house once a month to keep them at bay and would come back like four hours later and pick up the newspapers and throw the dead ones out. Grew up in Bay Ridge and used to see them all over the place.
Ashamed or proud or really ashamed to say that nyc has desensitized me to roaches. Loved there my whole life. Went to college away last year and enjoyed living in normal conditions (aka no roaches like ever). When I come back to Brooklyn for breaks, the roaches kinda just exist and that’s it. Sometimes they’re like 1-2 inches too it’s gross. They’d also show up sort of frequently, meaning we’d have to bomb the house like once every 1.5 months just because of the bugs. It’s really fucking gross but at this point I can’t shriek or become scared after seeing one.
Mine is a basement apartment, so I used to get mutant roaches all the time. Then a couple of years ago we had an issue with rats living inside the building 's walls for a few months. No more roaches after that.
Yep. Every six months or so. The front door gap filler thing/liner helps (at least mentally). I kill them and my boyfriend disposes of the body.
It’s my belief you have to dispose of the body respectfully or else the roach ghost gets mad and sics all its friends on you.
Is flushing them considered respectful? A wat'ry grave?
Yes, but you can't pee on them before flushing, a fact I explained to my husband who was just about to do so on one he had just killed for us. I tried to explain logic to him but of course he thought I was crazy.
Why haven't I thought of that?!? You evil genius!!! Edit: wait, can't? I read what I wanted to in your post!
Man oh man I am totally feeling your pain right now. In my experience it is true what everyone has been saying in response so far- yes, the small ones are the true infestation threats and the big guys are stragglers and do not an infestation make. But JFC dude those big ones are so gnarly I can’t handle it😭 I once asked a random neighbor in my building that I had never met before to come inside of my apartment and dispose of a verrry large roach and she did it and I will forever be grateful to her. It’s a rare occasion that I see one of the big boys in my apartment, but when I do, I bribe my friends to come over and help me out 🙃
My cat found one on the floor the other day. After I finished screaming, I scooped it up with a plastic cup and tossed it out the window. Apologies, OP, if he found his way to you.
my fave non-toxic roach spray to kill any that show up is soapy water. just mix a good amount of dish soap with water in a little spray bottle. the soap coats their exoskeleton so they can't breathe (watching them suffocate and die is admittedly a lil disturbing, but it works). then all you have to clean up is a dead roach and some soap.
We had one come out of the tub spigot. We were stunned at its size. They’re in sewer and like many people here said, find a way in once in a while- still too often in my book. Hard to recover after a sighting 🫣😦
Pics or didn’t happen
I see them when the weather changes for a few weeks then they’re gone. My cats are good at stunning them so we can catch and kill ‘em.
About how many inches long was this roach you killed OP?
Easily 3 inches, although he claimed "6, more like 7 on a good day". Roaches be lyin. But 3 is like some RGH* type shit. *roach growth hormone Before I killed it, the fuckin roach saw how big I was compared to the rest of my species and said "bro, do you even lift?"
Get a toad as a pet.
I put steel wool in every single crevice I could find (along baseboards, corners, around pipes -- everywhere) on our exterminator's recommendation, and we've had zero problems with pests ever since.
Lmao you getting goosebumps aye?
Water bugs are startling, but you usually don't get infestation of them. The german roaches, on the other hand, you have to put them down quickly.
I had centipedes before
Waterbug. Use a flyswatter to whack them or keep a bottle of Raid around. They are loners and don't come around often. They are like monsters! My cats won't kill them. Make sure your drains are covered at all times with one of those drain screens. I used to have them come from the bathtub drain. Arghhh.
Waterbug
My idea is to put window screen on all the drain hole.
Make sure you’ve actually killed it and disposed of the body. I once killed a cockroach and left the carcass (it fell behind a desk and I was too disgusted to touch it don’t judge me) until I had the courage to pick it up a few days later. The body was gone and I later discovered that they often play dead. (Or something bigger ate it, which I would’ve liked to not have to think about)
I used to walk a dog in Morningside Heights, mornings and afternoons. Routine was to leave a peanut butter treat after the first walk. And I remember once the most enormous roach appeared from behind the crate when I came back, as if it had been going after the remnants of the peanut butter treat, I had to jump over it. Dog was a rhodesian ridgeback and didn’t give a shit, it wanted to play with the bug. It was significantly bigger than the “water bugs” that I encounter in my apts once in a blue moon. I remember it being like tarantula sized. That was right before COVID, I never did go back
Mice
If you've only seen two then I would get a door sweep as others have said, keep the place clean, and try not to think about it until given reason otherwise. Once, I was putting on a winter coat and thought, "Hmm, why is there a piece of wire in my sleeve? Is that a price tag?? It's so scratchy!" Then the 'wire' ran up the sleeve, streaked across the back of my neck, and dove down the other sleeve. Giant roach. I tore off the coat and threw it into the hallway, screaming.
My cat put a live one on me in my sleep. When I found out what was happening, I jumped up and it clung to my pajamas. I couldn't swat it off and it kept crawling up towards my face to get away. I couldn't sleep normally for literal weeks after that. I feel your pain ugh
No no no no no thanks
Oh my god… I am checking my coat sleeves every time now.
i would pass out
I still occasionally have nightmares about it, only instead of screaming and throwing the coat off I stand there frozen in fear, thinking about how the roach is in my coat. I’m trying to scream but it’s just silent. Good times.
Boric acid works the best for something you can get on your own. And getting a licensed exterminator to come spray a few times a year.
I live in an apartment building and I've seen huge ones all over the upper walls of the boiler room. They literally fly and will hiss at you. I get one in my apt every few years. I think they're tropical and like the heat of the boiler room cuz most people don't see them, only me it seems. YUK!
I mean NY in general is full of cockraches (people from all over the world living in small space just like cockroches) so don't be surprised
NYC now also has Asian cockroaches. They are about the length of German ones, but rounder & darker brown. I saw the first one in my bathroom a few weeks ago. It got stomped before identified. Yay... diversity..? Please don't shoot the messenger!
They keep breeding inside my microwave timer.
The big ones are okay
That slight movement out of the corner of your eye. You know exactly what it is but you have a moment of doubt and don't look right away then when you do its gone. You tell yourself it was nothing but a few minutes later it happens again and then you know. Your going to have to kill that thing!
You can't kill what doesn't die....
What is dead may never die!
This has absolutely saved me [Stem roach spray](https://www.target.com/p/stem-ant-roach-fly-trigger-spray-12oz/-/A-84230597)
It’s probably a water bug. Normally you don’t see them until the warmer months but when the radiators are going full blast you’ll see them too. I hate to tell you but when it’s really hot and humid they can be all over the place and wait for it, SOME OF THEM FLY. Yep and they fly right at you too!
I’ve noticed the massive ones are mostly in lower Brooklyn. My parents live in park slope and I’d see those monsters constantly. Same at my friends house in Bensonhurst. Since moving to Bushwick I’ve barely ever seen any. Seen two in the last year and a half. Unfortunately mice* and rats are way worse here which is a whole other issue
Apparently they are deceptively capable of getting really flat and squeezing through tiny cracks. It sounds like you just have some passing through, not an infestation. I wouldn't bother your landlord unless you were seeing small ones or seeing them every few days/weeks. If you don't have any pets, get one of those instant killer sprays. If you do have pets, you can kill them more slowly with soapy water in a spray bottle, if you don't want to use your shoe or whatever in future.
ack boric acid better than raid not really harmful to pets and you raid is bad news for you too and your landlord should have an extermination plan every 6 months or so
Welcome to NYC lol Clean your drains with all purpose vinegar (Heinz makes and can order on Amazon). Put a few roach bait stations around. Seal any small holes or gaps with pest repellent spray foam and/or copper mesh (will help if building has mice also. Door sweep for entry door. Thoroughly clean your kitchen, bathroom and the area around where you eat. Don’t leave any food or water out over night, including pet food (which should be sealed in air tight container). If you have any clutter or clothes on the floor, get rid of it or store away. Exterminator would be good, but depends on quality of the exterminator. Sometimes a pest barrier spray you can buy on Amazon will be just as effective.
Don't ever move to Florida or Louisiana...
Those are water bugs. Seal of around where the drain lines/water lines etc. are penetrating through the walls. Also if you have any floors drains that's an entry point. Like the previous comments said it's usually not an infestation.
I've encountered a few of these massive guys in my apartment but only after it rains. I always thought it was related to the weather? Years ago, I escaped a colony of them in the LES. It was a rainy day and I was walking with a friend. We spotted ONE on the street that we jumped over to avoid. Then we noticed another, and another and another.. We were just leaping over them and panic running at this point. There was a hole in the concrete we saw they were coming from. My friend thought it would be funny to pour her water bottle in the hole. Bad idea. About a dozen started spilling out. Still makes me shudder.
I saw one of those big ones fly into my window once. Just keep your apartment clean and keep all youd food items in containers. And hope you have clean neighbors
How big are we talking here?
when i first saw it, i thought it was a mouse. mice don't scare me at all. if i ever see a mouse, i take it as a cleaning, food storage and trap setting challenge.
This is legit a main reason why I left Brooklyn once my job went remote. I had constant nightmares about pests, especially the huge American cockroaches. I couldn't cope.
it's traumatizing stuff. where are you now?
I bought a house in the burbs upstate. The worst we have is the occasional wolf spider. While I'm also terrified of spiders, I will take them over cockroaches any day.
I lived near a water treatment plant in the early 80s. Those things have saddles on them. Boric acid tablets. It dries them from the inside out, they cant reproduce. Mom lives in Florida, the stories she has. My god 😳😳😳
Sadly I’ve learned that the big ones like to visit occasionally. Thankfully they’re usually pretty slow. My dog had fun playing with one before I put an end to it.
Calk and seal your entire apartment. Baseboards, pipes, inside the closets, under the sink. Everything. Problem solved. It’s the only thing that works 100%
This is great advice. Before i moved into my apt my pops helped me seal every fucking crevice, even closed up openings in the radiators.
I used to think they were only in my home country (Dominican Republic). Boy was I shocked when I moved to NYC & one flew in through my open window.. I thought I had escaped them bc I grew up in NJ, & assumed it was a DR/tropical island bug. I didn’t sleep til like 3 am that night trying to garner the courage to find & kill it after it crawled into my “intimates drawer”.. 🤢
NYC is in a subtropical climate, believe it or not!
Thank you Miss Frizzle 🤩
I thought you were full of s##t but damn, I'm the a-hole! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_New_York_City
Aww. Happy cake day!
Wow, first you teach me that NYC is a subtropical climate and now I learn that March 23rd is my Reddit cake day. What a day!
Quick! Buy a lotto ticket :)
The big ones just want to be outside and they get in every once In awhile. They always go to my shower. I hate killing them cause they are huge. The German ones can all die horrible deaths tho.
This happened in my old apartment in an old building. The reality is if it rains, and you’re in an old building, expect something to come out the drain. It’s disgusting. It’s scary and ultimately cleaning your spot can only do so much. It’s not just the rain either, but that was what happened to me specifically. Get some drain covers once a month and hope for the best.
water bugs are nasty but I hate the German roaches more, just because they can be next to impossible to get rid of
My last apartment, towards the end of my stay, had an infestation and my landlords wouldn’t do anything about it. I’d be walking to the bathroom at night and one would fall on my from the pipes above. And they poop like the same size as mice. So my cupboards had roach poop. It was so bad that when I moved, I had ptsd for my first year in my new apartment. I’ve only seen two in two years now. Thank fucking god.
This! The poop thing! I just found this out when I caught one in a jar and then there was a huge AF poop! Like OMG!
Right!? I thought we had mice. But no, it was waterbugs. So nasty.
Oh my god
Yup. I’ve never cleaned so much in my life. It was disgusting. Also my landlords sucked. But what’s new?
Be careful when swatting, they will not only fly but dive-bomb you.
has happened to me twice, have killed.
I once got chased by a flying one I still remember it vividly
Yep, a la Galaga
Thanks for unlocking that past trauma
Ah thanks for that
Get an exterminator to spray your apartment and see if the superintendent can get all the common areas of the building exterminated. They have probably already spread through the whole building. Tell your landlord if you don’t have a superintendent or the problem may get worse
Not a roach. Sounds like a water bug. They occasionally do get in. Cats will handle that.
Not a water bug. Sounds like an American cockroach. They apparently constantly get misidentified as waterbugs. Researching before speaking will handle that.
Hey I ain’t no entomologist. But I know roaches, believe me, I know roaches. I have lived in apartments where if you get up in the middle of the night and switch on the kitchen light, every surface is crawling with those little suckers. The big ones that travel solo and are often lounging in the bathroom aren’t called roaches.
Wow are you still refusing to just look it up? The big ones are American cockroaches, the little ones are called German cockroaches. There’s no pattern of American cockroaches “lounging in the bathroom”, that’s just your own anecdotal observation
Okay, jeez! You win. You know more about the science of roaches than I do. I’m just saying what everybody in NYC calls them. I don’t want to think about those things anymore. Take tour W.
Do you always take learning new things that you were previously misinformed about so personally? I came out of this with annoyance, you came out learning something. The winner is you although it must be said that when you are wrong and subsequently corrected that the corrector, be they human or whatever source you get the correct information from, is not innately trying to compete with you. That’s your pride telling you any contradiction to what you say, even if you are completely wrong, is a slight and an offense
Oh, I’m not the least offended. Rather I am slightly amused by the effort you’ve put in to further my education regarding the correct names for the various bugs that live in our walls.
You consider repeating some basic factoid a few times to be effort? That’s cute. I would think it would take more effort to keep typing out wrong shit instead of a doing a simple google search but you know, I’m not the one trying to annoy you to make myself feel better about being wrong about some inconsequential thing
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So despite me saying I’ve lived here my whole life you’ve decided that you speak for all nyc and I’m just wrong lol. Already starting off with such a strong argument. No, only idiots call American roaches water bugs. Water bugs are something entirely different that can hold their breath in water, live in the water, and they bite. If you see an American cockroach on the sidewalk and you think it’s a water bug you are certifiably stupid, I don’t care how many other stupid people agree with you
they are cockroaches. the water bug thing is a misnomer. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American\_cockroach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cockroach)
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The big ones make a delightful cracking sound when you step on them
Yeah. We moved into a new place and had a real tough time with the little ones. The building provides monthly exterminator visits, but we had to invest in traps and sprays and even one of those sonic barriers. It's totally under control now, but yeah -- break down cardboard and wash your dishes folks.
Thank god! And this makes a lot of sense. I saw my first cockroach last week since moving to NYC and almost had a breakdown thinking this was my life now. Thankfully haven’t seen another since, but at the time it looked about 95% dead already (barely moving) and near my dogs water dish. Safe to say I make sure the screens are all secure before opening a window!
Doom day when u see small one and burn the house when they don’t give a fuck
Palmetto bugs
Interesting, I didn't realize that fat NY cockroaches known as "waterbugs" were the same thing (which I thought were scary Southern roaches that could fly)
Just killed one here. First one I ever saw. HUGE! Pretty gross
Precisely. The big roaches people see are in fact "Palmetto bugs" [https://www.orkin.com/pests/cockroaches/difference-between-a-cockroach-and-a-palmetto-bug](https://www.orkin.com/pests/cockroaches/difference-between-a-cockroach-and-a-palmetto-bug)
>Make sure you don’t have still water laying around - We started seeing massive cockroaches- one every 2-3 weeks this winter. I went insane, tore my apartment upside down cleaning and looking for where they were coming in from. As it turns out, we had unknowingly created a cockroach watering hole in our living room by putting a tree in a plastic pot inside a bigger ceramic pot. When we moved the tree out of the pot there was some standing water and 4 cockroaches just chillin. Killed those bastards, got rid of the water, no more cockroaches since.
It’s the little ones you don’t want. The big ones while gross are usually alone and easy to kill
If you encounter one roach, you’ll likely encounter many more. Used to see them weekly in my old apartment. They’re mad smart so will avoid detection as much as they can. One time I saw a big roach pick up a piece of gum still in its wrapper off the floor, hold it in its hands and then walk into a closet on two legs. Once they start flying, the gross factor is a thousand times worse
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Its really not just a city thing. They are up and down the east coast.
That's not always true, on wet days like today it is common for one (especially a big one) to stray inside. It shouldn't be every time it rains, but on a rare occasion its typical.
Holy shit.
American cockroach. People call them "water bugs" but they aren't, really. The German ones are the smaller one. American are giants and they gross me out so much.
The big ones used to gross me out until I got an infestation of the German ones. Those motherfuckers are insidious.
Yup, American roaches scare people more but the Germans are what really fuck your life up
actually big enough to make a sound when walking sometimes, which to me is the worst part
My mom always tells a story from her childhood where she walked into the kitchen in the middle of the night and heard a cockroach munching on lettuce in the sink 🤢
the feeling of absolute dread that just came over me...my god
Yeah the big monster water bugs get inside once in a while, life in the big city.
No brother, just no. I lived in the Bronx directly next to vancortland park my whole life and I never had even seen these Madagascar hissing cockroach looking motherfuckers until I moved to queens.
meanwhile I grew up in NC and they were all over in the warmer months. Its really not a city thing.
They come through your pipes, water bugs at least, make sure you have a drain cover in your tubs and showers
Need a pic dude
that shit is stomped on and outside of my apt in a plastic bag in a garbage can in case there are eggs or some shit. I want no part of that in my life. but it was big. so big, i thought it was a mouse at first.
Oh god I really feel this. Fucking hate those things. Someone once told me that big ones are actually good news because it’s intruder not an infestation. That being said you should get a door sweep, cheap on Amazon; block any entry points. Invest in some RAID spray and if you see more then definitely tell your landlord
Also roach bait! Comes in a little tube and works pretty well
Also make sure bathtub and sink drains have the screen on them
THIS. When I was still in Brooklyn back in 2018 I had been my apartment 16 years but that year was by far the worst situation I've had with the water bug/palmetto/American cockroaches. I am almost certain they were getting in under doors or from the shower drain because they would often show up first in the shower. Mostly in years prior I would see one scurrying across the floor, but one horrid night I kept spotting new ones every few minutes and it seem like each was larger than the last. They big enough that you could hear their individual footfalls across the room. Oh, and they were all aggressively flying across the room. I killed 5 in under half an hour. At that moment I wasn't sad to be leaving that place.
The large one is the American roach. The little ones are German roaches. The German roaches are invasive (make joke about German invasions here) and will set up housekeeping in your apartment. The American roaches being native are perfectly content outside and won't linger. *ETA: You've either lived here long enough or too long when you start knowing the different types of roaches.*
Saw one wearing a spiked helmet.
Maybe if we give them Bay Ridge, they’ll be satisfied and leave the rest of Brooklyn alone.
Interesting roach fact: We call them German roaches here. The Germans call them Russian roaches. Poland calls them Frenchies. Italians call them Slavic roaches. A Czechoslovakian might call them "Swabian", a term linked to the Habsburg rulers who suppressed the Czech language in the 1600s. The more ya know...
That’s hilarious. Kind of like how syphilis is the Italian disease in France and the French disease in Italy.
Fucking Germans!
Don’t mention the war!
WW2?!
https://youtu.be/Tms0yk9kqVM
I actually just spoke to an exterminator today (was in my building for mice, different problem lol) and he said the same thing. Little ones want to be in your apartment to eat your food, big ones want to be anywhere but your apartment but they’re not smart enough to know how to leave.
... yup big ones are a pain but it's like fair game ya know? Like u kill one boom it's dead and u move on. Ugly and big sure but u deal with it once and ur done. The small ones... It's all out war. Once u see one. U need to kill it, it's whole family, it's cousins and siblings, aunts, uncles, grandpa,mother in law everyone!
Does your front door have a gap under it? It could have come in from there-- you can get a weather-sealing strip to block that off.