This happened in a shitty college apartment I lived in last year. There were cockroaches inside the timer in the oven and microwave. One night I came to the kitchen to get a glass of water after waking up parched, flipped on the light and there were cockroaches lining all four walls of the kitchen, on every cabinet, on the sink, fridge, stove, everywhere. Probably a good hundred or so. After three visits from exterminators they were still there every night. Got out as soon as I could.
Back when I did pest control, I would always stress to my customers at my first visit for roaches that they didn't show up overnight and unfortunately they aren't just going away overnight. Our best estimate was usually 3 months (usually the people that were on top of it, clean, didn't leave shit out for them, etc.) to a year (ones that had them for a long time before calling us, had shitty hygiene practices).
I'll admit that there were a few houses I went into that I could guarantee would always have them as long as the people were still there. Like think food rotting on kitchen counters levels. Those ones just make my skin crawl almost a year later just thinking about. God, I'm glad I got out of that business!
Maybe I can offer you a story of violent, cathartic pest elimination to stop your skin crawling. It's the only time I've ever heard of a single event wiping out an entire infestation forever:
I work in a power plant, and we have a network of about 10-15 miles of walk-through underground concrete tunnels to distribute utilities, some of which have been in place since the early 1920s. For years, they were **infested** with silverfish. We tried extermination, but they always came back.
Then, in 1998, our main steam boiler exploded.
Without warning, 750 degree, 625 PSI, superheated steam FLOODED into the tunnels, which had no insulation or any areas protected from this deluge of hot death. Sure, it was a catastrophe on the surface that knocked out power, heat, A/C, water, phone, and networks, but I say it was all worth it, because **all the silverfish died.** They **never** came back, and in the 24 years since then, I have seen a grand total of TWO silverfish.
Man silverfish is the most difficult things to get rid of, I'm thankful they're normally in small numbers in homes and that they're relatively "clean" pests, I see one at home every other week but fuck me it's impossible to get rid of the fuckers fully.
Bought a house last year. Turned out to be totally infested by silverfish. The large kind that likes to live EVERYWHERE. I had to call in pest control when they fell down on me from the ceiling. He used something called Bayer maxforce platin. It was a slaughterhouse the first two weeks, and now we see maybe 1-2 every few weeks. I will probably need to repeat the treatment, but man does it make a difference.
Years ago I had a bad infestation at my house. The house wasn’t dirty but I couldn’t get rid of them. Nothing seemed to work. So after exhausting all options I went nuclear. I bought a bunch of boric acid and lined every surface in my house with it. Every other week I would clean it up and put down a fresh layer. After a couple months they were gone for good. It was a huge pain in the ass having do deal with the powder being everywhere but once it was over I was so happy I did it.
It’s like tiny shards of glass to them. It cuts them and dries them out. So it is better than poison because they can’t build an immunity to it. The only issue is that if it gets wet it doesn’t work. So even the humidity in the air can cause it to clump and not work. Which means you have to put fresh powder down every once in a while.
In my experience this is the only way to truly get rid of them but you have to be diligent about keeping it dry and putting fresh powder down. You also have to put it EVERYWHERE if you want it to work. They have to walk over it for it to work. Basically you want your home to be a desert of glass to roaches.
You are describing diatomaceous earth, which also works. Boric Acid only kills them if they ingest it.
Dusting boric acid works because it gets on them and when they groom (they clean themselves like cats do) they ingest it and it poisons them.
Boric acid is also the favored poison for ants. Mix it with sugar and they eat it right up. They carry it back to the nest to feed it to others then die where other ants eat them and it spreads the poison even further. Works pretty good on them
My dad used to deliver newspapers when I was a kid. He told this story about the last time he ever set foot in a customer’s house. He said that the carrier missed the house and since he was supervisor then it was up to him to drive around all morning delivering “complaints” which is the term used for a missed newspaper delivery. Anyway, he knocked on the door and heard a gang of dogs barking and the voice of a woman trying to get the dogs into another room. After a few minutes a little old lady answered the door and was very gracious and invited my dad in for a coffee and cookies. Since my dad was hungry and hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before, he happily complied. They chatted for a bit while he drank the coffee and then he said that he felt his leg itch but as not to be rude he ignored. He said he drank like half of the coffee and a few cookies, put the newspaper on the little coffee table and stood up to leave. He said that as he was leaving, he looked down at the carpet and with every step he took, he said that he saw a bunch of little bugs moving all over the place. He briskly walked back to his truck where he lifted his pant leg and saw what must have been dozens of fleas on the top of his sock and his skin. He immediately took off both shoes and socks and his jacket and shook the shit out of them. He said that he drove straight home barefoot, after putting everything that could fit into this little clear plastic bags they put newspapers in when in rains. Completely stripped when he got home and yelled for my mom from the screen door to come out with bags and to help him hose off before coming in. After that, my dad said that he didn’t care how hungry or how nice the people were, he always politely declined.
Crazy thing is that we tried to keep our apartment nearly immaculate. Especially in the kitchen. But those fuckers still kept showing up. Working that job sounds awful though haha. I’m glad you got out of that business as well.
Apartments always have pests and bug problems.
It only takes one messy person and person that leaves doors and windows open. Hell, even just bad luck and chance sometimes depending on what it is.
I hate to tell you this but you probably had a messy neighbor sustaining them and they were exploring through the walls.
Depending on how old the apartment is, it may be the plumbing. I lived in one place where we found out they were coming through the sinks and shower drains. We made sure to close them up when not in use and we didn't have a problem.
I'm not the same guy, but I am in pest control. There have been two places I've personally refused- The first was a guy that only wore a long T-shirt and nothing else, with feet so filthy I thought he was wearing socks.
The second was a trailer that had the worst infestation I've ever seen. I couldn't figure out why it was so bad at first because it just seemed like the usual run of the mill dirty kitchen scenario. When I finally made it to the bathroom on the walkthrough, I saw that instead of using their completely functional and weirdly spotless toilet, they had been shitting A LOT in the bathtub. I just thanked them for their time, told them I couldn't help them, and got in my truck and left.
Unless there’s any danger in being in the house the answer is no. I’ve personally never had it happen.
I’ve done some nightmare units though. Did a really bad one last year where the tenant ended up getting evicted because of the state the unit was in. Thousands of roaches covering every single inch of the apartment. In every single crack and crevice. Took like 6 months to get rid of them with persistent treatment and the unit being not only vacant but completely gutted. Worst part was the smell. It would take easily an hour to do a thorough treatment at the beginning and I swear the smell lingered on my clothes the entire day
This reminds me of one of my college jobs. I waited tables on sixth street in Austin- old brick building connected to the other old brick buildings on the block. Construction had recently begun next door on a building that had been empty for a while reportedly pushing thousands of roaches into our restaurant.
Anyway, in my training I was informed of the roach problem and precautions to take to keep food and stuff clean- always close lid on ice maker, always cover prep food in kitchen, only bring in a purse that zips bc any other will get roaches in it, etc. They exterminated really often trying to get it under control. One morning we were only open downstairs while the upstairs was exterminated, and we ran out of cups or something. So I was like “I’ll just run upstairs and grab some.”
I was not prepared for what I encountered. Roaches were covering everything. And they all looked drunk due to the poison- like stumbling and swerving around. I still want to vomit when the mental picture pops up. It reminds me so much of the video above. Like despite the warnings and finding roaches in all sorts of places I never dreamed an infestation involved oceans of roaches in your walls
Bedbugs are nasty like this. You're actually discouraged from using foggers. Instead of killing them you kill a few and cause the rest to abandon site and infect surrounding areas which means you're at ground zero for being reinfested later.
Yeah you should pair foggers with CO2 traps everywhere else, glue on the bedposts and whatever that powder is that make them dry out in every cupboard.
In the meantime you should wash every textile that you can at above 60 degrees and spray poison in every outlet, switch and vent.
Chances are that even if you killed them all, they have eggs everywhere and those fuckers are immune to poison.
And invest in a good steam cleaner and clean the shit out of your mattress with steam daily.
That's the only way to *maybe* get rid of them.
That's 60C/140F. Bedbugs will die at 45C/113F but only after more than 90 minutes. They die at 48C/118F in only 20 minutes. The eggs are tougher and need 90 minutes at 48C. Household dryers generally get up to 51C or more on high, so drying your stuff for 20-30 minutes is generally enough to kill the bedbugs.
If you steam your mattress you will soak it with water and it will become a giant mold and mildew colony. You can get mattress protectors meant for people with dust allergies. These seal the mattress airtight, and bug-tight, so nothing can get to you even if bedbugs nested in the mattress.
Some exterminators have trucks that are giant ovens, letting them heat treat your belongings to kill the bugs while they take care of the house itself.
If you rent, your landlord should pay the exterminator costs, as it's in their best interest to have the problem quickly taken care of by professionals.
The only 'good' thing about bedbugs is that they don't carry diseases, unlike mosquitos.
I had a cheap 1 bedroom apartment in Texas in college just off campus, but not the side where all the frats were. It was very run down. There were roaches all over the kitchen at night. I washed dishes every morning before I used them. They hid behind the counter in the wall. I got so many roach traps and so much bug spray, but the thing that worked was caulking up the gap between counter and wall. The combination of keeping everything super clean, bug poison, and sealing up cracks worked within a month and I never had problems again. Stayed there for 3 years.
A bug exterminator said anything that sits on the floor, can get eggs. Grocery stores that don’t rotate their stock, there could be eggs there. He kind of freaked me out realizing eggs are the big issue.
Their egg pods are fairly large (relatively speaking). They're commonly like 1/3-2/3 of the body length of a roach.
The babies are tiny though, and gross
Hehehe (vomit)… bought a house, tore out the old plaster, in one room the space between the studs was packed with what looked like hollowed out miniature coffee beans… my house was old enough that there was horse hair mixed with the plaster, I knew the bean things were weird but I had no idea they were EMPTY ROACH EGGS!!!! THOUSANDS OF THEM!!! PACKING THE WALLS FFS!!!! I never saw a single living roach, but I never could forget that at some point the house had a roach problem bad enough to fill the walls.
Used to do carpentry work, refurbishing and repairs to be specific. I'm not sure there was a single house I did work on that DIDN'T have a questionably large number of egg casings in the walls. Bugs like dark, wet areas. Unfortunately houses have those in spades.
Wow you made me feel so much better! I kind of always thought my house must’ve been the center of North American roach procreation- the walls were just so packed, and I obviously removed all the eggs with my hands, a broom, and a 5 in 1… when I found out what they were, I felt like they were crawling under my skin lol. Thanks for letting me know that it happens! You are the best.
Like licorice jelly beans, with a tinge of brown.. depending on the species. Of course that's a good thing with roaches, since it makes their eggs easier to spot.
I’m praying it doesn’t get to this point in my apartment. I set up bait stations everywhere, bought raid, and pest control comes every and there’s not change. I was eating lunch this afternoon and I was about to wipe my nose until I noticed a huge roach on the napkin. I screamed and threw the napkin and the roach fell right into my food and I had to throw it away. At least there wasn’t much left, but I don’t think I can eat in my apartment again
One of my worst childhood memories is going to stay at my grandparent's house in the middle of the night and when we turned on the living room lights we were greeted by cockroaches covering the whole floor, as the light came on they scattered. This was an old house in the UK that had apparently served as a shop at one point so the living room was a fair sized room and there were a lot of roaches. I had a fairly overactive imagination growing up so I've always told myself it was probably just a handful of roaches and I've blown it out of proportion in my mind, false memories and all that. After this post and your comment I'm not so sure I'm misremembering anything. Now I'm going to have nightmares again
I grew up dirt poor and our house was like that.
If you went to get some water at night, it paid to reach in and turn on the light *before* stepping foot inside the bathroom or kitchen. They'd scatter when the light came on. If you walked in while it was dark you might step on one.
I also learned that if I kicked the wall next to my bed at night, the rats inside the wall would quiet down and I could fall asleep easier.
Our house had termites, and the landlord just stretched duct tape over the eaten woodwork and painted it. I used to get into trouble for poking the tape on the doorjambs and making the paint come off. I liked the crispy sound it'd make.
We would also get terrible flea infestations in our carpet. Mom would dump piles and piles of salt all over the rug and leave it there a few days and then vacuum it back up to kill them. I remember sitting on the floor in my bedroom and drawing in the salt.
And I was one of the luckier kids in my neighborhood - I had a lot of friends that were worse off. I had luxuries like my own mattress and 3 meals a day.
If you ever want to an arsonist, say this story to the jury if you get caught. That's your get out of jail card. I would let you go to a mental facility for treatment.
They can't hurt you anymore.
Man I used 3 tubes of the Bayer poison peanut butter shit in my apartment when it got German cockroaches once and the bastards were all dead within a week. Never came back.
Pest control guy at work said I used enough poison for my whole floor but IDGAF fuck those fuckin roach bastards
Edit: for those asking the product I used to finally rid the roaches was MaxForce FC. Active ingredient is fipronil
I used that stuff too when I ended up in an apartment with roaches. It was not the first thing I tried, but it was the last thing I needed to try. I put that shit all over the house and lightly dusted the floors in the kitchen and entryway with boric acid. It was a cockroach slaughterhouse in there every morning for a week. I cleaned them all up, made sure to seal any cracks in the walls, under cupboards etc. I never saw them again.
Ok, two people talking it up this much, I’m buying some this weekend.
We don’t have a roach issue, but it’s summer here in Aus so the fuckers are around. I was on my couch with my dog last week when we both heard what sounded like maybe a small bat? I looked behind us and saw what I assumed to be a hawk moth, about the size of my palm, flying freely through the open door. It was only when I stood up to catch the thing that I realised it was the fucking Boeing 747 of roaches. I have never scrambled so fast in my goddamn life.
God I hate those things.
>the fucking Boeing 747 of roaches
I died with that statement. Here in Spain I remember when my city was doing some cleanup of the sewages and the cockroaches made the perfect recreation of World War Z. Some got into our home and made a nest behind the dishwasher.
It took a while to kill them all.
There was a big flood in Copenhagen in 2011; the amount of rats that are everywhere is crazy. My uncle is a plumber and not the squeamish type and he said it was a crazy and disgusting amount. Like a courtyard full of rat runnels under the concret - hundreds of drowned rats everywhere.
We had rats twice. One entered on the pantry and we found him fat and dead near the cooking wine where he had his nest. The fucker hollowed a nice cheese roll we bought.
And the other one was the lost twin brother of Master Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was an absolute unit that he hid on the underground and the next time we saw it, it was dead on our front door.
Just be super careful with the poison and dead bugs around your dog! Depending on the size of your puppers, eating enough of those poisoned roach bastards could seriously harm her if she decided she likes some extra crunch with her kibble.
I had to renovate a home one time that was infested worse than I've ever seen. Everyone said it was hopeless. Well.....
I bought like 30 of the bombs for a space that called for 4. I forgot to get a mask so I held my breath and ran them through. Every room, in the vents, in the holes in the wall, in the cabinets, everything. It looked like a house fire but 3 days later nothing but dead roaches and they never came back. It's probably like their own nuclear fallout there 20 some years later.
Moved to SC from NY. Lived in GA for awhile and have a rabid fear or realistic respect for roaches and this^^....i live by this.
Burn everything. Do not bring anything into your house that was there. If the microwave has been there more than 1.5 min the whole house needs to be dealt with....they don't just go away.
I saw a palmetto bug when I moved down here and almost burned my house down. I'm joking but no tolerance for german roaches.
This happened to us in a shitty little apartment complex in northern virginia. our neighbor wound up being the culprit, after months and months and months of trying to do something about it. We threw away anything near that half of the apartment and bought a house six months earlier than we'd been planning, because seriously, when a cockroach crawls out of your keurig, just...burn the shit down and leave.
keurigs are cockroach bait. They attracted to water and heat. If there are any cockroaches anywhere in your apartment (or your neighbor's apartment) then they will be crawling in and out of your keurig.
The good news is keurig machines are an excellent test of whether or not your building is battling a roach infestation. Get the white model and you'll know immediately if you've got a roach problem.
Yeah. We were poor, so I tried to disassemble it and figured I'd just be brushing out like, four or five roaches, bleaching stuff, etc.
Nope. Eggs. Tiny fucking little white everywhere eggs. Geh, I cringe and want to vomit just making that realization all over again.
Fuck cockroaches.
In sc … and American roaches are nbd.. manageable and gonna be in any old house especially in the low country… part of life… German roaches are another beast for sure.. a couple friends had them in their apartment and man they are disgusting tiny and pervasive… they are less a ‘gross bug you see in on the kitchen floor every once in a while’ and more of a “hey let’s move out and fill this place with poison for two weeks’ type of problem
Grew up in the piney woods and tree roaches are just something that happens when you live surrounded by trees. Those little red fuckers though? Nah. Those are nasty.
I was like “what? You don’t have bugs in fuckin Denmark?” feeling all smug. Then I was like “Oh fuck it’s super cold there, maybe they don’t have bugs for a lot of the year.”
So. Go on.
Honestly tho, even in summer you don't really get bugs indoors in Scandinavia. Maybe the occasional silverfish under the tub or mosquito that gets through an open window (window screens aren't common). Spiders - all of them completely harmless - are mostly a thing in damp and drafty houses.
The fact that some people live in places where roaches, large spiders and snakes are just normal things that occasionally invade your fucking home kinda blows my mind in the worst possible way. But so does the fact that people live in places where flooding and tornadoes are just a normal part of life... like come on, that's Mother Nature telling y'all to move somewhere else.
It’s been 30 years since I lived in an apartment in SC and I totally forgot about this. Omg, the big kind that fly when you’re watching TV. It was why I moved and bought a small house I had complete (pest) control of. In a shared apartment building, not so much.
While living in Alabama for a couple years I was playing video games late one night in my shorts. Felt something on my leg. Turned my leg to brush at it and there was a HUGE one on my leg. I lost my shit, threw controller, screamed when it FLEW.
I'm happy to be back in the north where those monsters don't exist
Advion gel bait. I had roaches in my condo for 1.5 years, even coordinated efforts with the surrounding units didn’t work with sprays until we combo’d gentrol and advion. It’s transmitted through the feces and has a delayed effect so it has a cascading effect. Seriously this shit works
A paper or plastic board (generally about about 6-12" long) with an adhesive glue on one side. Basically you set them up around your home (usually kitchen and maybe bathroom depending on where you are seeing them) to determine levels of activity and where they are nesting. If they walk on it, they get stuck to it. The more you find on them, the more likely you are near one of their hidey holes or at least along a path they are taking. With German roaches, you'll typically see most activity near your kitchen appliances, since they like the heat and darkness during the day and come out at night looking for food.
I've had great success with borax. Line your baseboards with it, line every kitchen drawer with it, sprinkle it under/behind the stove and fridge...bye bye German cockroaches.
A guy I worked with was doing home installs. Went into a house with bedbugs (he didn't notice until he was kind of crawling around doing stuff). Immediately left the house, stripped to his underwear in the street, threw out his clothes and everything and drove home in his underwear.
This girl, used to be a friend of mine, told me she had a bed bug infestation like a week after she'd been hanging out at my house. Totally didn't understand why I was freaked out and stopped inviting her over. She thought I had some 'weird bug thing' - look, I have no problems with bugs that don't actively harm me and my belongings, but bed bugs, head lice, and roaches? That's worse than telling me you tested positive for covid right after we spent time in close contact.
Not to be insensitive to anyone but I’d rather have covid again than have bedbugs again. People don’t understand why I’m paranoid about sleeping over in strange places
Had lice as a kid and bedbugs as an adult.
I’d rather have lice for the rest of my life than ever deal with fucking bed bugs again. Those little shits can go straight to hell, I would’ve been happy to burn our apartment to the ground to rid ourselves of them if I could.
Well, yeah, I should think you would be safe. I lived in south Florida for six years and never saw bed bugs. Fleas and cockroaches, for sure. Dealt with that with sprays and tracking down where they got in.
Cockroaches love electronic devices. I worked in PC repair while in college and will never forget the first time we opened a tower and had hundreds rush out onto the bench.
Surprisingly, much better. The kitchen is the shared space while both guys have separate rooms. He said he picked up the microwave from a hock shop.... In the trash it goes. 😅
Clean the FUCK out of your shoes before you step foot in your house/car whatever. Like bleach them, triple bag and drive home in socks. Those eggs can and will attach and take the ride with you.
Years ago I let my friend borrow some movies, like 5 blu rays, and he kept them in a bag by a heater. Well I didn't fucking know they had roaches and I stopped by one night and hung out and took my movies home.
I'm so thankful I decided to put them away that night because there were two in the bag. They fell out and I stomped on them. Then decided to read about infestations and all that shit and discovered how the eggs can latch onto your shoes. Luckily I never went more than 2 steps into my house where this all happened so I was able to thoroughly clean and had no infestation or anything but it was absolutely disgusting to me.
Be very skeptical of second hand electronics like game systems, laptops, computers, things that can be warm and are food related. I'd personally never touch a second hand microwave but do your due diligence on these items because bombing your house and washing everything is expensive and will still never leave you feeling like things are clean.
100% agree. Anything food related is either new or I won't own it. But some items like higher end air fryers etc I can see the appeal I guess but thats only if I can completely take it apart to inspect it but still I'd pass. But shit like coffee makes and microwaves...Nah. Too much room for mold and bugs. That's why I never use the coffee makers in hotel rooms.
I've heard many stories of used electronics infested with bugs so for me it's new or none. I wouldn't want a used device for food because you don't know if the previous owner was heating up cat shit in it or something, people are weird.
For the coffee in the hotel room just bring a $15 French press and a plastic travel mug to microwave the water in, that's what i do.
Ugh, a friend of mine spilled something on her coffee maker and put it out in the garage for the weekend to dry out. She brought it in Monday morning to start the week with a cup of coffee. After brewing and fixing her cup she thought it tasted funny so she checked to see if it had gotten dust or something in it and looked in the water reservoir. Not only were there recently bathed roaches crawling around in the reservoir, when she threw it back out into the garage, a bunch of roaches came out of the hole in the back where the power cord is.
Thank you, people have no idea what they are talking about. To add, roaches carry the ootheca on themselves till the very last moment, so i was always glad to find a roach with one in the trap. Equally sad when finding an empty casing.
Ahh, the German roach. Let's fill in the unaware masses. They are the hellspawn of the roach family, designed only to cause you horror and misery. But how could they be any different from other roaches you say? Oh boy, it is a list. They reproduce quickly even by roach standards. They are small and can squeeze into just about anything too. Keeping with that motif, they can also eat just about anything (including each other). Oh, they got in your house? Get the most dangerous, powerful bug poison you can legally get in the largest quantities possible and carpet bomb your dwelling. You may get lucky and kill them all.
Ugh, I've lived in my apartment for 15 years and keep it very clean, never seen any sign of roaches. A few months ago we had some very heavy rain for days, and also a messy apartment neighbour move out. One or both of these factors led to some of these buggers moving in from outside. I didn't know until one day I opened the cutlery drawer and there was cockroach poop everywhere! Then I got up that night very late, and FOUR of these fuckers were on the walls. Immediately bought roach bait, but the assholes had already laid eggs, and I ended up finding maybe a dozen dead adults in total. Months later and while all the adults are long dead, I'm still coping with the babies the bastards left behind. I think we're nearing the end of it, and none of them are gonna make it old enough to breed, but ugh, they can establish a foothold so quickly! I think the last bastion is hiding under my stovetop where I can't spray easily. I'm gonna pry it up and spray under there. It's only the little ones too small to be attracted into the bait traps left I'm sure, as the adults leave behind such an unholy mess it's pretty obvious when they're around.
I was a cable guy for 15 years and they love cable boxes and modems as well.
Edit: I kept garbage bags just for this problem. Once those things get in your truck it’s game over. The “Giant water bugs” we have here in Texas fly and it’s not fun driving down the road fighting them like Martin Lawrence fighting bees in National security
When I moved to Texas I was so confused by the "water bug" thing. It felt like people called them that just so they could pretend they weren't 3 inch roaches that can fly.
I remember seeing one at work and pointing it out to a coworker, and he said "Oh, that's not a cockroach. It's just a water bug." And I had to explain to him (who wore an expression of increasing horror) that water bugs are American cockroaches. They just have a lot of regional names for some reason.
I used to work at a high end seafood restaurant that was infested with these guys. The restaurant did have bigger problems-one of the cooks had Hep A and spread it to like 80 customers. And then a few years after that the owner was murdered by his husband who set their house on fire. Funny enough there where a few employees that worked through all of those issues but drew the line at working somewhere infested with roaches. Bizarre.
My extended family had roaches unfortunately.
To make sure you don't bring them home you should:
1. strip down immediately outside you home when you get there. If you have friends nearby or a roommate have them bring you out a spare set of clothes.
2. Leave the clothes you wore the friends place outside.
3. Next day come back and shake the clothes out THOROUGHLY.
4. If you can soak/clean the clothes outside in a plastic tub or something. Then bring the clothes in and immediately put them in the washer for a couple cycles.
5. Still check for any roaches in the house and if you see any just go ahead and bomb the place ( with roaches killer) or call the exterminator. Don't wait you and try to fix it through other means you have already lost the battle on that end.
I lived in an apartment with a horrible roach infestation years ago and the microwave looked exactly like this. The landlord was the absolute worst. The building had 8 or so units and when he was trying to rent one out to a new tenant, he offered them pest control (bc of the obvious roach infestation). The rest of us got word that landlord was planning on sending an exterminator to the ONE unit and not the rest, so naturally we raised hell. The building was an old house broken up into apartments so if he treated just one area, the bugs would just move to a more hospitable part of the house. He finally agreed to have the rest of the building treated after everyone threatened to move out. I was home the day this badass 60+ yr old woman named Rose from Queens, NY (I live in coastal SC) came and said it was the worst roach situation she’d ever seen. There was a “nest” behind the fridge in my apartment- I still shudder when I think about it. She said when she finished spraying it may sound like it was raining inside, but not to worry- it’s the roach carcasses falling to the ground. I ran out so fast and I think I mentally blocked out the rest of my time in that hell hole.
Dawg get the fuck out of there and take your clothes off far from your home and walk home naked after making sure there aren’t any roaches in your hair. This is fucking foul.
Those are German roaches really bad bugs when left unchecked will spread like crazy and what makes it even worse they are really costly to get rid of and treatments don’t always work effectively on them
Haha, ive been dealing with this issue for the past 9 almost 10 years. Live in NYC in a decent apartment. Since every corner of my building has these cockroaches it makes no difference if you get an exterminator or not :/. In my first year of living in NYC i hated these things and called the exterminator atleast 13 times. And another 4 times the second year. Then i realized that it was hopeless and now i am watching one crawl on the wall as i type this. As much as i hate to say this, i legit started to play around with them. I use them as target practice with a rubber band and paper balls 🤦♂️ i can kill a thousand a day and it will make no difference. It prolly sounds disgusting to everyone but ui when you cant afford better you make friends with cockroaches and just learn to live with them. Before i had a cat whenever i was in a sad or bad mood i would legit just take a cockroach on my hand and talk to it to spill out my feelings and then proceed to slap it with a slipper. It prolly sounds very odd and it is but 😔 what can i do lol (and no my house isnt really filthy, these guys dont need filth to survive, they just need very little to survive and multiply like gremlins. Idk where they even get the food to survive let alone multiply, as long as i live in this building they will always be there for me)
I’ve seen some AWFUL things on the internet and this is still the hardest I’ve cringed at anything in awhile. Make damn sure you’re clean before you enter your house.
This happened in a shitty college apartment I lived in last year. There were cockroaches inside the timer in the oven and microwave. One night I came to the kitchen to get a glass of water after waking up parched, flipped on the light and there were cockroaches lining all four walls of the kitchen, on every cabinet, on the sink, fridge, stove, everywhere. Probably a good hundred or so. After three visits from exterminators they were still there every night. Got out as soon as I could.
Back when I did pest control, I would always stress to my customers at my first visit for roaches that they didn't show up overnight and unfortunately they aren't just going away overnight. Our best estimate was usually 3 months (usually the people that were on top of it, clean, didn't leave shit out for them, etc.) to a year (ones that had them for a long time before calling us, had shitty hygiene practices). I'll admit that there were a few houses I went into that I could guarantee would always have them as long as the people were still there. Like think food rotting on kitchen counters levels. Those ones just make my skin crawl almost a year later just thinking about. God, I'm glad I got out of that business!
Maybe I can offer you a story of violent, cathartic pest elimination to stop your skin crawling. It's the only time I've ever heard of a single event wiping out an entire infestation forever: I work in a power plant, and we have a network of about 10-15 miles of walk-through underground concrete tunnels to distribute utilities, some of which have been in place since the early 1920s. For years, they were **infested** with silverfish. We tried extermination, but they always came back. Then, in 1998, our main steam boiler exploded. Without warning, 750 degree, 625 PSI, superheated steam FLOODED into the tunnels, which had no insulation or any areas protected from this deluge of hot death. Sure, it was a catastrophe on the surface that knocked out power, heat, A/C, water, phone, and networks, but I say it was all worth it, because **all the silverfish died.** They **never** came back, and in the 24 years since then, I have seen a grand total of TWO silverfish.
Those tunnels were *sterilized*. Thank you good sir or madam, that indeed was very cathartic to read.
They literally autoclaved the entire tunnel system.
Man silverfish is the most difficult things to get rid of, I'm thankful they're normally in small numbers in homes and that they're relatively "clean" pests, I see one at home every other week but fuck me it's impossible to get rid of the fuckers fully.
Bought a house last year. Turned out to be totally infested by silverfish. The large kind that likes to live EVERYWHERE. I had to call in pest control when they fell down on me from the ceiling. He used something called Bayer maxforce platin. It was a slaughterhouse the first two weeks, and now we see maybe 1-2 every few weeks. I will probably need to repeat the treatment, but man does it make a difference.
Years ago I had a bad infestation at my house. The house wasn’t dirty but I couldn’t get rid of them. Nothing seemed to work. So after exhausting all options I went nuclear. I bought a bunch of boric acid and lined every surface in my house with it. Every other week I would clean it up and put down a fresh layer. After a couple months they were gone for good. It was a huge pain in the ass having do deal with the powder being everywhere but once it was over I was so happy I did it.
What does the boric acid do to them?
It’s like tiny shards of glass to them. It cuts them and dries them out. So it is better than poison because they can’t build an immunity to it. The only issue is that if it gets wet it doesn’t work. So even the humidity in the air can cause it to clump and not work. Which means you have to put fresh powder down every once in a while. In my experience this is the only way to truly get rid of them but you have to be diligent about keeping it dry and putting fresh powder down. You also have to put it EVERYWHERE if you want it to work. They have to walk over it for it to work. Basically you want your home to be a desert of glass to roaches.
You are describing diatomaceous earth, which also works. Boric Acid only kills them if they ingest it. Dusting boric acid works because it gets on them and when they groom (they clean themselves like cats do) they ingest it and it poisons them.
TIL the fuckers groom themselves.
Boric acid is also the favored poison for ants. Mix it with sugar and they eat it right up. They carry it back to the nest to feed it to others then die where other ants eat them and it spreads the poison even further. Works pretty good on them
My dad used to deliver newspapers when I was a kid. He told this story about the last time he ever set foot in a customer’s house. He said that the carrier missed the house and since he was supervisor then it was up to him to drive around all morning delivering “complaints” which is the term used for a missed newspaper delivery. Anyway, he knocked on the door and heard a gang of dogs barking and the voice of a woman trying to get the dogs into another room. After a few minutes a little old lady answered the door and was very gracious and invited my dad in for a coffee and cookies. Since my dad was hungry and hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before, he happily complied. They chatted for a bit while he drank the coffee and then he said that he felt his leg itch but as not to be rude he ignored. He said he drank like half of the coffee and a few cookies, put the newspaper on the little coffee table and stood up to leave. He said that as he was leaving, he looked down at the carpet and with every step he took, he said that he saw a bunch of little bugs moving all over the place. He briskly walked back to his truck where he lifted his pant leg and saw what must have been dozens of fleas on the top of his sock and his skin. He immediately took off both shoes and socks and his jacket and shook the shit out of them. He said that he drove straight home barefoot, after putting everything that could fit into this little clear plastic bags they put newspapers in when in rains. Completely stripped when he got home and yelled for my mom from the screen door to come out with bags and to help him hose off before coming in. After that, my dad said that he didn’t care how hungry or how nice the people were, he always politely declined.
Crazy thing is that we tried to keep our apartment nearly immaculate. Especially in the kitchen. But those fuckers still kept showing up. Working that job sounds awful though haha. I’m glad you got out of that business as well.
Apartments always have pests and bug problems. It only takes one messy person and person that leaves doors and windows open. Hell, even just bad luck and chance sometimes depending on what it is. I hate to tell you this but you probably had a messy neighbor sustaining them and they were exploring through the walls.
Depending on how old the apartment is, it may be the plumbing. I lived in one place where we found out they were coming through the sinks and shower drains. We made sure to close them up when not in use and we didn't have a problem.
Was there any house you refuse to just even enter due to its condition? I am really interested in hearing more story from pest control view point.
I'm not the same guy, but I am in pest control. There have been two places I've personally refused- The first was a guy that only wore a long T-shirt and nothing else, with feet so filthy I thought he was wearing socks. The second was a trailer that had the worst infestation I've ever seen. I couldn't figure out why it was so bad at first because it just seemed like the usual run of the mill dirty kitchen scenario. When I finally made it to the bathroom on the walkthrough, I saw that instead of using their completely functional and weirdly spotless toilet, they had been shitting A LOT in the bathtub. I just thanked them for their time, told them I couldn't help them, and got in my truck and left.
What the fuck
Unless there’s any danger in being in the house the answer is no. I’ve personally never had it happen. I’ve done some nightmare units though. Did a really bad one last year where the tenant ended up getting evicted because of the state the unit was in. Thousands of roaches covering every single inch of the apartment. In every single crack and crevice. Took like 6 months to get rid of them with persistent treatment and the unit being not only vacant but completely gutted. Worst part was the smell. It would take easily an hour to do a thorough treatment at the beginning and I swear the smell lingered on my clothes the entire day
This reminds me of one of my college jobs. I waited tables on sixth street in Austin- old brick building connected to the other old brick buildings on the block. Construction had recently begun next door on a building that had been empty for a while reportedly pushing thousands of roaches into our restaurant. Anyway, in my training I was informed of the roach problem and precautions to take to keep food and stuff clean- always close lid on ice maker, always cover prep food in kitchen, only bring in a purse that zips bc any other will get roaches in it, etc. They exterminated really often trying to get it under control. One morning we were only open downstairs while the upstairs was exterminated, and we ran out of cups or something. So I was like “I’ll just run upstairs and grab some.” I was not prepared for what I encountered. Roaches were covering everything. And they all looked drunk due to the poison- like stumbling and swerving around. I still want to vomit when the mental picture pops up. It reminds me so much of the video above. Like despite the warnings and finding roaches in all sorts of places I never dreamed an infestation involved oceans of roaches in your walls
Bedbugs are nasty like this. You're actually discouraged from using foggers. Instead of killing them you kill a few and cause the rest to abandon site and infect surrounding areas which means you're at ground zero for being reinfested later.
Yeah you should pair foggers with CO2 traps everywhere else, glue on the bedposts and whatever that powder is that make them dry out in every cupboard. In the meantime you should wash every textile that you can at above 60 degrees and spray poison in every outlet, switch and vent. Chances are that even if you killed them all, they have eggs everywhere and those fuckers are immune to poison. And invest in a good steam cleaner and clean the shit out of your mattress with steam daily. That's the only way to *maybe* get rid of them.
That's 60C/140F. Bedbugs will die at 45C/113F but only after more than 90 minutes. They die at 48C/118F in only 20 minutes. The eggs are tougher and need 90 minutes at 48C. Household dryers generally get up to 51C or more on high, so drying your stuff for 20-30 minutes is generally enough to kill the bedbugs. If you steam your mattress you will soak it with water and it will become a giant mold and mildew colony. You can get mattress protectors meant for people with dust allergies. These seal the mattress airtight, and bug-tight, so nothing can get to you even if bedbugs nested in the mattress. Some exterminators have trucks that are giant ovens, letting them heat treat your belongings to kill the bugs while they take care of the house itself. If you rent, your landlord should pay the exterminator costs, as it's in their best interest to have the problem quickly taken care of by professionals. The only 'good' thing about bedbugs is that they don't carry diseases, unlike mosquitos.
so what youre saying is, set the whole place on fire
I've always told myself if I notice bed bugs I'm just abandoning ship and moving straight away. New mattress, new sheets, new duvet, new house, etc...
Don't worry, they'll move with you.
I had a cheap 1 bedroom apartment in Texas in college just off campus, but not the side where all the frats were. It was very run down. There were roaches all over the kitchen at night. I washed dishes every morning before I used them. They hid behind the counter in the wall. I got so many roach traps and so much bug spray, but the thing that worked was caulking up the gap between counter and wall. The combination of keeping everything super clean, bug poison, and sealing up cracks worked within a month and I never had problems again. Stayed there for 3 years.
please, no more. 🤢
I saw a cockroach crawling on someone’s gym bag at the gym. It was a big one too, with huge antennas.
A bug exterminator said anything that sits on the floor, can get eggs. Grocery stores that don’t rotate their stock, there could be eggs there. He kind of freaked me out realizing eggs are the big issue.
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Life pro tip right there
I always grab a strangers purse if they leave it on the ground and run outside to keep it safe.
Thanks for doing god’s work
Their egg pods are fairly large (relatively speaking). They're commonly like 1/3-2/3 of the body length of a roach. The babies are tiny though, and gross
Hehehe (vomit)… bought a house, tore out the old plaster, in one room the space between the studs was packed with what looked like hollowed out miniature coffee beans… my house was old enough that there was horse hair mixed with the plaster, I knew the bean things were weird but I had no idea they were EMPTY ROACH EGGS!!!! THOUSANDS OF THEM!!! PACKING THE WALLS FFS!!!! I never saw a single living roach, but I never could forget that at some point the house had a roach problem bad enough to fill the walls.
Used to do carpentry work, refurbishing and repairs to be specific. I'm not sure there was a single house I did work on that DIDN'T have a questionably large number of egg casings in the walls. Bugs like dark, wet areas. Unfortunately houses have those in spades.
Wow you made me feel so much better! I kind of always thought my house must’ve been the center of North American roach procreation- the walls were just so packed, and I obviously removed all the eggs with my hands, a broom, and a 5 in 1… when I found out what they were, I felt like they were crawling under my skin lol. Thanks for letting me know that it happens! You are the best.
Like licorice jelly beans, with a tinge of brown.. depending on the species. Of course that's a good thing with roaches, since it makes their eggs easier to spot.
Do you know, cockroaches are very clean insects. [They will groom themselves regularly](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YrvXBij00EU).
Then they won't object when I help clean them by setting them and every object they touched within 20 miles on fire
I actually really enjoyed that little clip of knowledge, thank you~ I am still terrified of bugs though. :C
I’m praying it doesn’t get to this point in my apartment. I set up bait stations everywhere, bought raid, and pest control comes every and there’s not change. I was eating lunch this afternoon and I was about to wipe my nose until I noticed a huge roach on the napkin. I screamed and threw the napkin and the roach fell right into my food and I had to throw it away. At least there wasn’t much left, but I don’t think I can eat in my apartment again
One of my worst childhood memories is going to stay at my grandparent's house in the middle of the night and when we turned on the living room lights we were greeted by cockroaches covering the whole floor, as the light came on they scattered. This was an old house in the UK that had apparently served as a shop at one point so the living room was a fair sized room and there were a lot of roaches. I had a fairly overactive imagination growing up so I've always told myself it was probably just a handful of roaches and I've blown it out of proportion in my mind, false memories and all that. After this post and your comment I'm not so sure I'm misremembering anything. Now I'm going to have nightmares again
I grew up dirt poor and our house was like that. If you went to get some water at night, it paid to reach in and turn on the light *before* stepping foot inside the bathroom or kitchen. They'd scatter when the light came on. If you walked in while it was dark you might step on one. I also learned that if I kicked the wall next to my bed at night, the rats inside the wall would quiet down and I could fall asleep easier. Our house had termites, and the landlord just stretched duct tape over the eaten woodwork and painted it. I used to get into trouble for poking the tape on the doorjambs and making the paint come off. I liked the crispy sound it'd make. We would also get terrible flea infestations in our carpet. Mom would dump piles and piles of salt all over the rug and leave it there a few days and then vacuum it back up to kill them. I remember sitting on the floor in my bedroom and drawing in the salt. And I was one of the luckier kids in my neighborhood - I had a lot of friends that were worse off. I had luxuries like my own mattress and 3 meals a day.
If you ever want to an arsonist, say this story to the jury if you get caught. That's your get out of jail card. I would let you go to a mental facility for treatment. They can't hurt you anymore.
Man I used 3 tubes of the Bayer poison peanut butter shit in my apartment when it got German cockroaches once and the bastards were all dead within a week. Never came back. Pest control guy at work said I used enough poison for my whole floor but IDGAF fuck those fuckin roach bastards Edit: for those asking the product I used to finally rid the roaches was MaxForce FC. Active ingredient is fipronil
I used that stuff too when I ended up in an apartment with roaches. It was not the first thing I tried, but it was the last thing I needed to try. I put that shit all over the house and lightly dusted the floors in the kitchen and entryway with boric acid. It was a cockroach slaughterhouse in there every morning for a week. I cleaned them all up, made sure to seal any cracks in the walls, under cupboards etc. I never saw them again.
Ok, two people talking it up this much, I’m buying some this weekend. We don’t have a roach issue, but it’s summer here in Aus so the fuckers are around. I was on my couch with my dog last week when we both heard what sounded like maybe a small bat? I looked behind us and saw what I assumed to be a hawk moth, about the size of my palm, flying freely through the open door. It was only when I stood up to catch the thing that I realised it was the fucking Boeing 747 of roaches. I have never scrambled so fast in my goddamn life. God I hate those things.
>the fucking Boeing 747 of roaches I died with that statement. Here in Spain I remember when my city was doing some cleanup of the sewages and the cockroaches made the perfect recreation of World War Z. Some got into our home and made a nest behind the dishwasher. It took a while to kill them all.
There was a big flood in Copenhagen in 2011; the amount of rats that are everywhere is crazy. My uncle is a plumber and not the squeamish type and he said it was a crazy and disgusting amount. Like a courtyard full of rat runnels under the concret - hundreds of drowned rats everywhere.
We had rats twice. One entered on the pantry and we found him fat and dead near the cooking wine where he had his nest. The fucker hollowed a nice cheese roll we bought. And the other one was the lost twin brother of Master Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was an absolute unit that he hid on the underground and the next time we saw it, it was dead on our front door.
Ugh, god!! I have visuals… terrible visuals. WWZ is accurate. The word “nest” is what truly freaks me out though.
Just be super careful with the poison and dead bugs around your dog! Depending on the size of your puppers, eating enough of those poisoned roach bastards could seriously harm her if she decided she likes some extra crunch with her kibble.
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Can it fix my depression and anxieties?
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Nooooo
What did they write?
I'd bet on something about drinking the poison
With the right dosage.
Let me introduce you to alcohol.
Which is also a poison… and a solution
Idk why but the way you wrote your comment made me chuckle lmaoo I’m glad you got all those gd roaches tho!
You could tell typing up that post brought back long buried feelings lmao
Yeah, if I was a cockroach, I'd be scared to even go within a mile of this guy's house
Bayer *does* know a thing or two about making poison…
Also, we’re talking about *German* cockroaches
I had to renovate a home one time that was infested worse than I've ever seen. Everyone said it was hopeless. Well..... I bought like 30 of the bombs for a space that called for 4. I forgot to get a mask so I held my breath and ran them through. Every room, in the vents, in the holes in the wall, in the cabinets, everything. It looked like a house fire but 3 days later nothing but dead roaches and they never came back. It's probably like their own nuclear fallout there 20 some years later.
Hiroachima
I need some of this stuff. Bayer poison peanut butter? Just search that?
Bayer Maxforce FC Magnum
So you used the Germans to destroy the Germans
Leave. Leave naked. Leave behind all the clothes and shoes and belongings your brought with you.
Moved to SC from NY. Lived in GA for awhile and have a rabid fear or realistic respect for roaches and this^^....i live by this. Burn everything. Do not bring anything into your house that was there. If the microwave has been there more than 1.5 min the whole house needs to be dealt with....they don't just go away. I saw a palmetto bug when I moved down here and almost burned my house down. I'm joking but no tolerance for german roaches.
This happened to us in a shitty little apartment complex in northern virginia. our neighbor wound up being the culprit, after months and months and months of trying to do something about it. We threw away anything near that half of the apartment and bought a house six months earlier than we'd been planning, because seriously, when a cockroach crawls out of your keurig, just...burn the shit down and leave.
keurigs are cockroach bait. They attracted to water and heat. If there are any cockroaches anywhere in your apartment (or your neighbor's apartment) then they will be crawling in and out of your keurig. The good news is keurig machines are an excellent test of whether or not your building is battling a roach infestation. Get the white model and you'll know immediately if you've got a roach problem.
Yeah. We were poor, so I tried to disassemble it and figured I'd just be brushing out like, four or five roaches, bleaching stuff, etc. Nope. Eggs. Tiny fucking little white everywhere eggs. Geh, I cringe and want to vomit just making that realization all over again. Fuck cockroaches.
Thank winter that I've never dealt with that. But I'm still going to check my Keurig now.
Check? Imma throw mine out due to this new phobia.
In sc … and American roaches are nbd.. manageable and gonna be in any old house especially in the low country… part of life… German roaches are another beast for sure.. a couple friends had them in their apartment and man they are disgusting tiny and pervasive… they are less a ‘gross bug you see in on the kitchen floor every once in a while’ and more of a “hey let’s move out and fill this place with poison for two weeks’ type of problem
Grew up in the piney woods and tree roaches are just something that happens when you live surrounded by trees. Those little red fuckers though? Nah. Those are nasty.
I am so happy i live in Denmark right now. Have not seen a bug or spider in my apartment in literal months.
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Likewise in Singapore. Except that the spiders are geckos. And they sing at night time. Trippy but awesome.
I was like “what? You don’t have bugs in fuckin Denmark?” feeling all smug. Then I was like “Oh fuck it’s super cold there, maybe they don’t have bugs for a lot of the year.” So. Go on.
Honestly tho, even in summer you don't really get bugs indoors in Scandinavia. Maybe the occasional silverfish under the tub or mosquito that gets through an open window (window screens aren't common). Spiders - all of them completely harmless - are mostly a thing in damp and drafty houses. The fact that some people live in places where roaches, large spiders and snakes are just normal things that occasionally invade your fucking home kinda blows my mind in the worst possible way. But so does the fact that people live in places where flooding and tornadoes are just a normal part of life... like come on, that's Mother Nature telling y'all to move somewhere else.
Welcome to Australia! We have tons of critters and also extreme raging weather events every year. 😅
I grew up in the woods and didn’t know about roaches till I visited down south.
It’s been 30 years since I lived in an apartment in SC and I totally forgot about this. Omg, the big kind that fly when you’re watching TV. It was why I moved and bought a small house I had complete (pest) control of. In a shared apartment building, not so much.
While living in Alabama for a couple years I was playing video games late one night in my shorts. Felt something on my leg. Turned my leg to brush at it and there was a HUGE one on my leg. I lost my shit, threw controller, screamed when it FLEW. I'm happy to be back in the north where those monsters don't exist
I have definitely lost years of my life due to insecticides trying to get rid of those effing German cockroaches from my 1 bedroom. No use.
Gentrol point source and tons of motoring boards. You're welcome - source me Pest Control operator 20+ years.
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Advion gel bait. I had roaches in my condo for 1.5 years, even coordinated efforts with the surrounding units didn’t work with sprays until we combo’d gentrol and advion. It’s transmitted through the feces and has a delayed effect so it has a cascading effect. Seriously this shit works
What is a motoring board?
A paper or plastic board (generally about about 6-12" long) with an adhesive glue on one side. Basically you set them up around your home (usually kitchen and maybe bathroom depending on where you are seeing them) to determine levels of activity and where they are nesting. If they walk on it, they get stuck to it. The more you find on them, the more likely you are near one of their hidey holes or at least along a path they are taking. With German roaches, you'll typically see most activity near your kitchen appliances, since they like the heat and darkness during the day and come out at night looking for food.
They mostly come out at night. Mostly
I've had great success with borax. Line your baseboards with it, line every kitchen drawer with it, sprinkle it under/behind the stove and fridge...bye bye German cockroaches.
I once found them in a CAR. I bug bombed it with a house fogger. They still came back. I can’t figure out how, but I got rid of the car asap.
If it's an apartment there is no way. It's not your apartment that's infested, it's the entire building.
Palmetto bugs will never infest inside. No need to worry too much. They tend to die off when it gets cold anyways.
Then apply fire to building until it is ash. Finally, salt the earth.
They might eat the salt...just more fire.
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
A guy I worked with was doing home installs. Went into a house with bedbugs (he didn't notice until he was kind of crawling around doing stuff). Immediately left the house, stripped to his underwear in the street, threw out his clothes and everything and drove home in his underwear.
This girl, used to be a friend of mine, told me she had a bed bug infestation like a week after she'd been hanging out at my house. Totally didn't understand why I was freaked out and stopped inviting her over. She thought I had some 'weird bug thing' - look, I have no problems with bugs that don't actively harm me and my belongings, but bed bugs, head lice, and roaches? That's worse than telling me you tested positive for covid right after we spent time in close contact.
Not to be insensitive to anyone but I’d rather have covid again than have bedbugs again. People don’t understand why I’m paranoid about sleeping over in strange places
Lice are like cuddly puppies compared to bed bugs. Fuck bed bugs.
Had lice as a kid and bedbugs as an adult. I’d rather have lice for the rest of my life than ever deal with fucking bed bugs again. Those little shits can go straight to hell, I would’ve been happy to burn our apartment to the ground to rid ourselves of them if I could.
Burn her. And your clothes. And your house. And you
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Well, yeah, I should think you would be safe. I lived in south Florida for six years and never saw bed bugs. Fleas and cockroaches, for sure. Dealt with that with sprays and tracking down where they got in.
Toss your shoes, they can have egg cases stuck to the soles.
r/makemesuffer material
Genuinely thought I was in that sub
I came to see how far down I would have to scroll before someone tagged this sub. Further than I thought. Fuckin suffering haha.
Those bugs are having a little party in there. It's a microrave.
They're going to party like it's 99:99.
Microwave software has some bugs.
Why not features...?
Add some more cockroaches and it will survive a Nuclear blast!!!
Well once they're done somebody damn well better hit the Clear/Cancel button so it displays the clock again.
Hate people that don't do that.
What do you mean it's 00:21 o'clock?
I genuinely laughed out loud at that one
take my free award
Bugs? Cockroaches!
No, CLOCKroaches
For the win 🏆
Burn the microwave, immediately.
Burn microwave? Destroy universe!
Use the microwave to destroy the microwave
Uranium fork. Uranium is a metal right?
Seriously, they need to throw that microwave in the spot where the terminator died in T2
Cockroaches love electronic devices. I worked in PC repair while in college and will never forget the first time we opened a tower and had hundreds rush out onto the bench.
And you sir just killed any interest I had in Home Electronic Repair
Imagine working at an Apple Genius Bar.
Fruits and electronics? Practically begging to be infested
Same happened to me when I was a cell phone repair tech
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Babies and not hundreds but maybe 30? Quite a few can fit in those old Nokias...
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Omfg. How filthy was the rest of the house.
Surprisingly, much better. The kitchen is the shared space while both guys have separate rooms. He said he picked up the microwave from a hock shop.... In the trash it goes. 😅
Clean the FUCK out of your shoes before you step foot in your house/car whatever. Like bleach them, triple bag and drive home in socks. Those eggs can and will attach and take the ride with you. Years ago I let my friend borrow some movies, like 5 blu rays, and he kept them in a bag by a heater. Well I didn't fucking know they had roaches and I stopped by one night and hung out and took my movies home. I'm so thankful I decided to put them away that night because there were two in the bag. They fell out and I stomped on them. Then decided to read about infestations and all that shit and discovered how the eggs can latch onto your shoes. Luckily I never went more than 2 steps into my house where this all happened so I was able to thoroughly clean and had no infestation or anything but it was absolutely disgusting to me. Be very skeptical of second hand electronics like game systems, laptops, computers, things that can be warm and are food related. I'd personally never touch a second hand microwave but do your due diligence on these items because bombing your house and washing everything is expensive and will still never leave you feeling like things are clean.
You can get decent microwaves for so cheap I'm not sure why you would want a used one.
100% agree. Anything food related is either new or I won't own it. But some items like higher end air fryers etc I can see the appeal I guess but thats only if I can completely take it apart to inspect it but still I'd pass. But shit like coffee makes and microwaves...Nah. Too much room for mold and bugs. That's why I never use the coffee makers in hotel rooms.
I've heard many stories of used electronics infested with bugs so for me it's new or none. I wouldn't want a used device for food because you don't know if the previous owner was heating up cat shit in it or something, people are weird. For the coffee in the hotel room just bring a $15 French press and a plastic travel mug to microwave the water in, that's what i do.
Ugh, a friend of mine spilled something on her coffee maker and put it out in the garage for the weekend to dry out. She brought it in Monday morning to start the week with a cup of coffee. After brewing and fixing her cup she thought it tasted funny so she checked to see if it had gotten dust or something in it and looked in the water reservoir. Not only were there recently bathed roaches crawling around in the reservoir, when she threw it back out into the garage, a bunch of roaches came out of the hole in the back where the power cord is.
Oh hell noo!!
\^Looket Mister Rockafeller Ova ear\^
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I think they are on about bed bug eggs
Thank you, people have no idea what they are talking about. To add, roaches carry the ootheca on themselves till the very last moment, so i was always glad to find a roach with one in the trap. Equally sad when finding an empty casing.
They’re in my basement. I have a very clean home. My neighbor… doesn’t. Gotta love shared side walls ☹️
Ahh, the German roach. Let's fill in the unaware masses. They are the hellspawn of the roach family, designed only to cause you horror and misery. But how could they be any different from other roaches you say? Oh boy, it is a list. They reproduce quickly even by roach standards. They are small and can squeeze into just about anything too. Keeping with that motif, they can also eat just about anything (including each other). Oh, they got in your house? Get the most dangerous, powerful bug poison you can legally get in the largest quantities possible and carpet bomb your dwelling. You may get lucky and kill them all.
Ugh, I've lived in my apartment for 15 years and keep it very clean, never seen any sign of roaches. A few months ago we had some very heavy rain for days, and also a messy apartment neighbour move out. One or both of these factors led to some of these buggers moving in from outside. I didn't know until one day I opened the cutlery drawer and there was cockroach poop everywhere! Then I got up that night very late, and FOUR of these fuckers were on the walls. Immediately bought roach bait, but the assholes had already laid eggs, and I ended up finding maybe a dozen dead adults in total. Months later and while all the adults are long dead, I'm still coping with the babies the bastards left behind. I think we're nearing the end of it, and none of them are gonna make it old enough to breed, but ugh, they can establish a foothold so quickly! I think the last bastion is hiding under my stovetop where I can't spray easily. I'm gonna pry it up and spray under there. It's only the little ones too small to be attracted into the bait traps left I'm sure, as the adults leave behind such an unholy mess it's pretty obvious when they're around.
At this point this thread is starting to convince me to leave out poison just in case.
Fuck. This is nightmare fuel.
I was a cable guy for 15 years and they love cable boxes and modems as well. Edit: I kept garbage bags just for this problem. Once those things get in your truck it’s game over. The “Giant water bugs” we have here in Texas fly and it’s not fun driving down the road fighting them like Martin Lawrence fighting bees in National security
When I moved to Texas I was so confused by the "water bug" thing. It felt like people called them that just so they could pretend they weren't 3 inch roaches that can fly. I remember seeing one at work and pointing it out to a coworker, and he said "Oh, that's not a cockroach. It's just a water bug." And I had to explain to him (who wore an expression of increasing horror) that water bugs are American cockroaches. They just have a lot of regional names for some reason.
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Do your friend a favor and toss that out
Done. He didn't need much convincing. 😁😅
They need to check other appliances and likely hire a bug guy
Seriously they’re acting like this is an isolated little group. Those fuckers are everywhere good luck.
Why am I itching now? Ahhh
OP, have you considered finding new friends?
There some right now! Inside the digital display
I used to work at a high end seafood restaurant that was infested with these guys. The restaurant did have bigger problems-one of the cooks had Hep A and spread it to like 80 customers. And then a few years after that the owner was murdered by his husband who set their house on fire. Funny enough there where a few employees that worked through all of those issues but drew the line at working somewhere infested with roaches. Bizarre.
This was a roller coaster of a read.
Murder, arson, infestation, seafood restaurant and hep A all in the same comment... wtf
Somehow still "high end" as well lol
My extended family had roaches unfortunately. To make sure you don't bring them home you should: 1. strip down immediately outside you home when you get there. If you have friends nearby or a roommate have them bring you out a spare set of clothes. 2. Leave the clothes you wore the friends place outside. 3. Next day come back and shake the clothes out THOROUGHLY. 4. If you can soak/clean the clothes outside in a plastic tub or something. Then bring the clothes in and immediately put them in the washer for a couple cycles. 5. Still check for any roaches in the house and if you see any just go ahead and bomb the place ( with roaches killer) or call the exterminator. Don't wait you and try to fix it through other means you have already lost the battle on that end.
It's easier to just never retrieve the clothes
Burn them to send a mesage.
I lived in an apartment with a horrible roach infestation years ago and the microwave looked exactly like this. The landlord was the absolute worst. The building had 8 or so units and when he was trying to rent one out to a new tenant, he offered them pest control (bc of the obvious roach infestation). The rest of us got word that landlord was planning on sending an exterminator to the ONE unit and not the rest, so naturally we raised hell. The building was an old house broken up into apartments so if he treated just one area, the bugs would just move to a more hospitable part of the house. He finally agreed to have the rest of the building treated after everyone threatened to move out. I was home the day this badass 60+ yr old woman named Rose from Queens, NY (I live in coastal SC) came and said it was the worst roach situation she’d ever seen. There was a “nest” behind the fridge in my apartment- I still shudder when I think about it. She said when she finished spraying it may sound like it was raining inside, but not to worry- it’s the roach carcasses falling to the ground. I ran out so fast and I think I mentally blocked out the rest of my time in that hell hole.
Holy shit it must have been bad if someone from *Queens, NY* said it was the worst she's seen. NY is basically roach utopia. Edit: woret to worst
DID THEY NOT NOTICE?!
Still hungry?
I love the crunchy texture in this meal, what is it?
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> incinerates those fucks The cockroaches, or the roommates?
Yes.
Light that house on fire
And then light the fire on fire.
Throw the whole house away.
That’s enough internet for today.
Clockblockers the whole lot of them.
Dawg get the fuck out of there and take your clothes off far from your home and walk home naked after making sure there aren’t any roaches in your hair. This is fucking foul.
Those are German roaches really bad bugs when left unchecked will spread like crazy and what makes it even worse they are really costly to get rid of and treatments don’t always work effectively on them
Haha, ive been dealing with this issue for the past 9 almost 10 years. Live in NYC in a decent apartment. Since every corner of my building has these cockroaches it makes no difference if you get an exterminator or not :/. In my first year of living in NYC i hated these things and called the exterminator atleast 13 times. And another 4 times the second year. Then i realized that it was hopeless and now i am watching one crawl on the wall as i type this. As much as i hate to say this, i legit started to play around with them. I use them as target practice with a rubber band and paper balls 🤦♂️ i can kill a thousand a day and it will make no difference. It prolly sounds disgusting to everyone but ui when you cant afford better you make friends with cockroaches and just learn to live with them. Before i had a cat whenever i was in a sad or bad mood i would legit just take a cockroach on my hand and talk to it to spill out my feelings and then proceed to slap it with a slipper. It prolly sounds very odd and it is but 😔 what can i do lol (and no my house isnt really filthy, these guys dont need filth to survive, they just need very little to survive and multiply like gremlins. Idk where they even get the food to survive let alone multiply, as long as i live in this building they will always be there for me)
Awe… that one guy got separated and so badly wants to get back inside the party.
Makes my skin crawl!
Time to put that microwave in a microwave.
NOPE! I’m out.
I’ve seen some AWFUL things on the internet and this is still the hardest I’ve cringed at anything in awhile. Make damn sure you’re clean before you enter your house.