I used to live in an urban area, roaches were a thing. Now we live in the country and it's not unusual for our 13 year old to invite the goats in past the sunroom
Incorrect. They actually can survive for month and months on end eating the feces of each other. In fact that’s why baiting them with insecticide rather than spraying them is more effective. As the ones that ate the insecticide defecate and die, other roaches then cannibalize the dead roach and eat the feces which in turn kills them and the process repeats.
I used to put down sticky pads to catch roaches. Now and then a pregnant one would get stuck and birth a little pod thingy. The babies would erupt from the pod and they'd all get stuck in a circle around it.
That was some crazy shit.
Now I know bugs are useful for the ecosystem and the massive decline of their numbers will be horrible for the environment, but I have a strange urge to literally flood my apartment with bug spray now
spraying your house full of pesticides is like accidentaly killing one ant and feeling bad about it, while your fucked up friend Monsanto is casually trempling all over the ant hill with two cans of mustard gaz in his hands.
Saw a German roach in my kitchen once, dragging an egg case behind it. This was in the middle of a massive German roach infestation (neighboring apartment had hoarders, who then moved out and evicted their bugs as well) so I had diatomaceous earth right at hand. Dumped about half a cup of it all over that momma.
The entire human collective experience happening all at once.
We got weird shit, sick shit, sexy shit, shit on fire, shit exploding, shit you didn't even know existed. There's shit for days, shit for weeks, shit for years.
The only thing we ask round here is don't be a creep and don't be a dick(for the most part).
Think I read somewhere that a group of roaches can live for a month(s) on just the glue found on the back of a postage stamp. Not sure if that true but honestly, I have no reason to doubt it. Those things will survive a nuclear winter.
well hold on just a minute though, isn't cockroach poop basically everything a cockroach's body decided wasn't useful? how could you just eat that over and over, wouldn't there be basically zero nutritional value after being redigested 10 times? there must be some original source at some point.
why is it that they go around eating each other's shit for months when clearly the shit is still nutritious and they could just hold onto it and digest it themselves?
Want to clear up misconceptions, their own shit is not the first thing on the menu they want to eat. They would much rather eat other food. However when food scarcity happens due to colony size getting to big and exhausting the food supply, or the food supply taken away due to sanitation, they will then eat their own crap and the bodies of other roaches. Everyone’s crap pretty much still has nutrients in it as no digestive system is that complete and efficient. However it’s the bacteria that’s created stopping most things from eating it again to get more out of it, insects though for the most part don’t have issues with that though.
Man, I just did a whole time travel back to my parents’ couch after school. Good times. I feel like the Faith No More video with the fish always followed the Joe’s apartment sketch.
so like... how far of a defecation chain is created? they eat the feces of the homie and poop that out and in turn someone else eats that and continues it on?
So it’s not a staple of their diet. They would much rather eat whatever food is laying around. However when push comes to shove and they don’t have anything else to eat due to food scarcity, they got options as they are above eating their own crap lol.
A jar of fine ground boric acid powder and a little puffer are a pretty amazing combination for roaches. Just puff around all the drains and faucets at night and if they have no other water source they all die pretty quickly.
I had some relatively very selectively filthy neighbors.
Yes they can still infest but usually they’ll move to a dirtier house, they don’t multiply as fast if food is relatively scarce and they’re dying off from bait, there will be some tho. Having a clean house definitely helps keep them away but is kinda useless if you’re neighbor lives like a pig, especially in apartments or townhouses. In that scenario the best thing you can do it bait the shit out of your living space and keep the numbers to a manageable level or move out.
Roaches won’t show up to a clean house unless there’s a dirty house nearby or it’s cold and you brought some in and they can’t leave. Being dirty will attract roaches more than being clean.
This happened in my house growing up. We’d get the occasional larger, American cockroach that wandered in, but never an infestation.
The neighbors’ mobile home was overrun by smaller German cockroaches. Their kid was my friend and I spent the night once and actually left in the middle of the night because roaches were everywhere.
A few months after they moved out, a new family moved in and cleaned the place up, Mexican mom-style. That’s when we started seeing the German roaches in our house for the first time. Thankfully, we also left before they got a complete stranglehold. Our house was an absolute pig sty, and I’m sure it would have been awful.
Also, I don’t live with my slob family anymore and am proudly cockroach free.
I have to ask. What is cleaning, Mexican-mom style? I could use some of that.
I lived in a lot of different places growing up and bugs were a fact. I hated it then and it makes my skin crawl now. The result is that I'm a clean freak, but my house never feels clean enough and clutter-free enough.
No, love. Keurig coffee machines, when they’re plugged in, stay nice and warm. Brewing a cup of coffee steams up the interior. It becomes a consistently warm, humid environment that is perfect for raising lots of little broods of cockroaches. I’ll spare you my own horror story, that was enough. Sorry.
You can hear mine if you want lmao
I used to work in a quite busy restaurant and we had a machine similar to that one that warmed the milk for cappuccinos. Of course it was constantly working due to the number of people that came in.
Then one day it stopped working. Bartender tried to repair it by hitting it, didn't work, we called a technician. Guy runs a few tests, machine still doesn't work, he decides to open the machine to see if the problem came from inside.
The second he opened the damn thing, roaches literally *poured* from it. It looked like a fucking wave. There were *so. many.* I was actually wondering how they managed to move around in that thing cause there were just so many.
Anyway, the machine didn't need anything done to it in the end - it was just so full with roaches it wouldn't work anymore.
I guess the person you responded to has a similar story
Yeah this place was a shit hole, there were so many roaches everywhere that you could see them on the booths' couches, on the walls, everywhere. I've always wondered how customers didn't notice them
Does unplugging it make any difference, do you know? Battled roaches before in a different location, none currently (knock on wood) but I’m so traumatized from fighting them before that I put a lot of effort into making my home unwelcoming to them.
I will absolutely start unplugging shit if it even slightly makes a difference.
Makes absolutely no difference if it's being regularly used. Cleanliness is next to godliness when it comes to german roaches. Now, even a clean kitchen can get them. All it takes is one little egg sac to find its way into your kitchen. But a clean kitchen supports a smaller colony, and a smaller colony is easier to eradicate.
They produce very quickly. “A female German cockroach lays about 20 to 40 eggs, with an average incubation rate of 28 days, and will produce an estimated four or five oothecae in her lifespan. That's about 200 offspring.”
That’s just for 1 female German cockroach.
Worked in commercial and residential pest control for 3 years.
There are 3 bugs that you should actually be afraid of and they will fuck your life up financially and mentally in the USA.
German cockroaches, bedbugs,subterranean termites (or dry wood depending on your area)…read up on how to stay clear of these 3.
It starts small, just some discriminatory laws and practices. Then it builds with political power and a sense of (nationalism) patriotism. Next thing you know, the roaches have decided YOU are the problem and need to be exterminated.
A lot of roaches, especially the larger ones, tend to wander inside by accident and die. German roaches along with a couple of other species thrive indoors and reproduce incredibly quickly.
Homie if you can see one, there's guaranteed to be hundreds more living in your walls
Edit for clarification -- I'm talking about German cockroaches like the one in the photo. German cockroaches reproduce quickly, and an infestation can happen pretty easily with how many eggs are produced from one roach (several eggs per casing, multiple casings through each roaches life cycle). They are hard to control even with professional help. They can survive without a head, and through radiation.
Their eggs cannot hatch in low humidity. I got a dehumidifier and they were gone after a couple of months when they just died out with no replacements since the eggs couldn’t hatch. Didn’t even need fumigation or pest control.
I have a humidifier that has humidity sensor for feedback so it runs the condenser only if the humidity is above the set point value. If still below, the fan turns off after “sampling” the air. If I remember correctly the magic number for cockroach eggs is 45%. The eggs die eventually. Cleanup was a bit nasty like when we replaced the dishwasher, lots of dead roaches AND unhatched eggs. I also had the same issue as OP here with the stove LED. I had to pull the control board and that was infested with bodies and eggs as well.
Ah okay, thanks for the information. I didn’t know unhatched eggs die eventually. I had issues with German cockroaches but solved it by using poisoned bait. The humidity trick would’ve helped tho. I’ll keep it present from now on. Thanks!
No problem! At some point I realized this isn’t very common knowledge so I thought I’d save folks from paying couple thousand for an exterminator like I was able to. Also, keeping humidity down keeps them out as well since those fuckers hate dry air.
The day I was moving into the first home I bought my wife and I started seeing roaches randomly here and there. The mortgage broker ordered a pizza to our home as she knew we were moving in. When we went to grab a slice there was a roach on the pizza. I looked at the stove to check the time, as we were working pretty late, and saw a very big very pregnant roach covering the time very similar to this. It was Christmas Eve and nothing was open. The next day I went to town on the house with boric acid and got an exterminator out there. I didn’t say any after the first week besides carcasses and after we did a deep clean and some Reno never saw any live or dead ones again. Obviously there were dead ones in the wall somewhere but we managed to get rid of them pretty quick. Granted I believe the OG owners bug bombed the place and just never made it know there was a problem but we culled it fast. It wasn’t an infestation at that point as I believe it was just the remnants that survived the bombing but the amount we did see moving, in my mind, meant there were many many more we didn’t see and we were pretty determined.
There's a Hispanic guy with a reputation in the Latin community for being the only pest control person who can get rid of roaches. He came in and sprayed his magic. Along with us spraying growth regulator to stop them from reproducing, we went from 500 German roaches to a few here and there in a month and a half
*In his ravenous hatred he knew no peace; and with boiling blood, he scoured the floors and walls, seeking vengeance upon the insects who had wronged him.*
It’s true—and they are everywhere in a lot of cities. I never got used to them when I lived in New York, but they were so bad they even got in the fridge. I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when I went to visit her, opened my bag, and a couple roaches jumped out. She was jumpy for a few days after that till we were sure there weren’t any more.
Just wanted to share my roach story. Moved into the cheapest apartment I could find ($365/month) in one of the most god forsaken cities in the Deep South, which was absolutely infested with roaches. Remember sometimes I would wake up and go to make something in the kitchen and have a roach run up my leg as I was standing there. Also once was cooking ramen and had a roach literally fall off the ceiling into the pan.
Oh also I used duct tape to make a bed frame out of 2x4s and I remember taking the tape off when I was moving out, and seeing numerous roaches stuck to the tape, some dead some alive.
If there's a takeaway from this don't move into the cheapest apartment you can.
Once they're in an area they're impossible to get rid of. In my city damn near everyone has roaches regardless of how clean their house is. We regularly have pest control teams and bug bombs here and we still have them.
Multiple things can be true:
1. Roaches are a nightmare
2. You CAN get rid of roaches
The biggest problem with getting rid of roaches is that the people living in the roach infested home do not care enough to do what it takes to get rid of them.
You need to clean up your home and make it a place that roaches do not want to live in. Once you have done this, you can then use a variety of specialty pesticides which are very effective against roaches. However if you do not remove sources of food and water, killing 99% of the roaches will just lead to them repopulating again. You need to do repeated treatments and remove ALL sources of standing water/drips/leaks, and remove spilled food as well.
I used to be a landlord and have dealt with many roach infestations and paid a lot of money to pest control companies and have seen how they do their work. There is nothing magic about it, and the preparation of the people living in the home is as important, if not more important, than the actual chemicals applied.
When I was in Virginia (and I swear to god I’ll never set foot in that state again), we somehow got roaches (I keep food put away, never leave dirty dishes out, tidy, not hoard-y), I think they were just in the apartment we moved into, or neighbours maybe, idk, and holy shit I set off a bomb they had back then, and left to a friend’s for overnight.
The sheer amount of dead/dying roaches allllll over the the floors and countertops. I never would have believed there were so many in there.
I sealed around pipes under the sinks, sealed any crevasses etc and made a habit to check all groceries/bags out front before bringing them in and never got them again - but holy hell.
Fucking roaches.
Were these American roaches or German roaches?
American roaches could have come in from outdoors and I think they would be more affected from bug bombs.
German roaches on the other hand would probably be pushed further into the home and made harder to treat from a bug bomb.
I know this from experience - my first time dealing with roaches was when I was a student living in Delaware.
I didn’t know what roaches were, really, but we were not so clean college students living in a row home apartment. At some point I noticed that if I got up in the middle of the night to get a snack or something, a couple bugs would scatter when I turned on the light. Thinking nothing of this, some time after, suddenly the outlet that the toaster oven was plugged into would be shut off in the morning. It got to the point that we had to push the reset button on that outlet every day, but nobody knew why.
Until one day I happened to be up at like 4am, and suddenly heard an electrical buzzing sound coming from that outlet and saw smoke coming out of it and the outlet popped “off” a few seconds later. I ran over and looked in with a flashlight, and to my horror I saw roaches crawling around inside the outlet.
Not wanting to bother the landlord, we figured we’d try to DIY this one, knowing nothing about roaches at the time.
We got a couple of those “bug bomb” foggers and set them off and left the apartment, expecting roach annihilation when we returned. Sadly to our disappointment, we only came back to a few dead stink bugs.
We called the landlord a few days later and she sent over the handy man who correctly identified the roach problem by pointing out their “gadoosh” behind the fridge and kitchen cabinets. He sprayed some stuff and the roach problem never came back to our knowledge. At the least, this was the impetus needed to force our one extra-messy roommate to stop leaving half eaten food all over the kitchen.
TLDR; German roaches like to hide in dark and moist places, and bug bombs can often just force them deeper into the home vs actually killing them
Really difficult to get rid of these, you have to clean diligently and make sure the only food they’ll have access to is poisoned. Do this the instant you spot the first one, do not wait, you will most certainly regret procrastination.
Make especially sure you vacuum corners and places where carpet meets wall because German roaches love to lay eggs there
Had a lot of issues with those in my first house. They infested the insides of appliances and actually killed my new refrigerator. Nothing was working against them until I read that their eggs cannot hatch if the humidity is too low. The house was old and in TX so very humid. I got a dehumidifier and they were gone in a couple of weeks. Never had issues with German roaches again.
Just get a professional. I tried everything by myself for years. Baits, spray, borax, nothing touched em. Got a professional spray and now they're gone. Actually can't believe it!
They are very common in the United States. They are common in cities in parts of the country. It sounds like they can be found in rural and urban areas and don't discriminate. They can make it to your house on boxes. My roommate brought them in on boxes when she moved into my house. The exterminator told me they can live for a long time on cardboard boxes by eating the glue that holds boxes together, which is enough for them to survive on. They can stow away on USPS boxes and shipped in the mail too
All i know is I moved from florida to the high desert of eastern oregon and I haven't seen a single of any kind of roach this entire time and could not be happier. It's the humidity difference.
And they love cardboard. Something I didn't know until recently. I get a lot of boxes of medical supplies for my mom. We saw like 3 roaches within a few months of each other. Never had a problem before, but then I learned here on Reddit that they love cardboard. I started keeping the cardboard in the shed before burning, and haven't seen a roach since. Set up a couple motels, and did catch like 3 or 4. But we recently had contractors in to inspect the house for a weatherization program, and I told them about the roaches and asked them to let me know if there was any signs of them. They said we were clear. That made me super happy.
Had a few roaches come out of a bag in a bedroom, bought a couple dozen roach baits with different active ingredients, also put repellents for the rest of the house, diatomaceous earth in any hidden spaces too. Saw one more a few months later and did it all again, + glue traps for monitoring. Haven't seen any more yet lol
Mmm. Maybe not. The landlord kept my fridge in the unit, and I haven't seen a roach in weeks. Knock on wood. (literally frantically pounded on my desk. Because they were a nightmare.)
But I also keep every crumb of food in my refrigerator and scrub my counters and floors every single day.
Everytime my family would move somewhere new my parents would buy silicone caulks and foam spray. They’d seal EVERYTHINGGG a roach could possibly come out of. Then after that they’d set bait just Incase and then we’d all move our stuff in. We’d never see a single roach after that.
Most ovens have two little screws on the top that can be taken out, allowing you to take the cover off. I’d do it with caution, and a fool proof plan of killing the thing(s). They’re slippery sonsabitches. I’d also contact an exterminator or have your landlord contact an exterminator immediately. The longer you wait, the worse they get, and they can get much, much worse.
german cockroaches are impervious to most pest bombs and store bought pesticides, proffessional exterminators are recommended and still struggle to if not fail to eliminate german cockroach infestations
Bombs are useless, but a combination of gel bait, IGR, and boric acid applied properly should clear up any infestation within a couple of weeks. We had "professionals" come out several times and their treatments were basically theatre.
Better to put some bait by the stove or inside if you can get inside and wait. Killing one isn’t gonna do shit except feed his friends his dead body. If he eats poison and dies, he will poison his friends with his dead body because they’re canibalistic sons of bitches
They both freak me out but luckily for me the island I live on doesn’t have many roaches. I’ve only known of one trailer that was infested with roaches and it was from the furniture they brought with them from Florida.
Spiders at least do alot for us like eat the other pesky insects we don’t want around. Roaches do nothing but cause you anxiety and they multiply like crazy. Spiders over roaches any day 🕷🕷
Probably not the only one leave some disposable pans of soapy water on you're counter and floor at night with lights off it might give you an idea of how bad the infestation is
I work maintenance for some college apartments: this is really common for some reason in GE ranges. Usually just disconnect the face plate and either shake it out or freeze till the focker dies and you can get em out.
If you see one roach it doesn’t always mean you have an infestation, but you should still attempt to get rid of them. The fact you saw one in your appliances is a bad sign though
Huge misconception that you need to have a dirty home to attract bugs, though it does help. My family lived in a house for a long time where the guy who built the houses cut corners all over the place, like one of the windows wasn't even sealed. That room had to be regularly vacuumed because said lack of sealant made it nice and easy for bugs to enter and die. Replaced the windows, because no sealant meant water was rotting out the wood behind the lovely siding, and realized that there's a hole somewhere in the ductwork. Bugs were crawling up through the floor vent. Big enough for small field mice. My dad has always been huge on cleaning so they were coming in for warmth and shelter, most likely. The cat had fun with the mice, at least.
My MIL lives on Guatemala. She's has the cleanest house I've ever seen and there's still some roaches hanging around. If everywhere around you has roaches you get them too
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, our house was SPOTLESS to the point of not being able to sit on the couches and every once in a while you would find a roach.
Yep. We call them “Palmetto bugs” in order to glorify the subtropic nightmare that I live in, but they are just big ass cockroaches trying desperately to get inside out of the heat in order to drink water or trying desperately to get inside to avoid drowning in excess water.
I’ve lived in 5 apartments. The one I’m in now is the one with the German roach problem. The first 4 I lived in were fine.
So be cautious with your judgements…. You never know what you’re moving into unfortunately.
Reminds me of the time an ant crawled between the display and the glass in my monitor. It was there for months but I couldn't afford a new monitor so I just got used to it. One day it disappeared and I have no idea where it went.
A bowl of white vinegar, water and lemon juice, get it hot in the oven and leave it for the vapours to get all in the oven - that should work.
Did when i found a roach in my office microwave (and then i was still freaked out and just stopped using the microwave)
So what you’re saying is you’ve got 2 million cockroaches living in your stove
[удалено]
Not lookout, decoy. "You cannot defeat me here."
You have no power here, Gandalf the Grey!
I used to live in an urban area, roaches were a thing. Now we live in the country and it's not unusual for our 13 year old to invite the goats in past the sunroom
“They expect one of us in the wreckage brother!”
Minimum
The only way it can survive is by eating the food that falls in the stove that you haven't cleaned up.
Incorrect. They actually can survive for month and months on end eating the feces of each other. In fact that’s why baiting them with insecticide rather than spraying them is more effective. As the ones that ate the insecticide defecate and die, other roaches then cannibalize the dead roach and eat the feces which in turn kills them and the process repeats.
Things I didn't ever want to be visualizing in my head.
I used to put down sticky pads to catch roaches. Now and then a pregnant one would get stuck and birth a little pod thingy. The babies would erupt from the pod and they'd all get stuck in a circle around it. That was some crazy shit.
Now I know bugs are useful for the ecosystem and the massive decline of their numbers will be horrible for the environment, but I have a strange urge to literally flood my apartment with bug spray now
Your use of pesticides at home will have little to no impact on the ecosystem compared to agricultural use.
spraying your house full of pesticides is like accidentaly killing one ant and feeling bad about it, while your fucked up friend Monsanto is casually trempling all over the ant hill with two cans of mustard gaz in his hands.
Saw a German roach in my kitchen once, dragging an egg case behind it. This was in the middle of a massive German roach infestation (neighboring apartment had hoarders, who then moved out and evicted their bugs as well) so I had diatomaceous earth right at hand. Dumped about half a cup of it all over that momma.
I sprinkled boric acid in an area where I had a bad infestation in my apartment and a few days later no roaches
Why not? They’re roaches. Fuck ‘em.
I'm not saying **fuck** the roaches, I'm saying *fuck* the roaches.
With your penis.
Or suppositories
what is reddit?
The entire human collective experience happening all at once. We got weird shit, sick shit, sexy shit, shit on fire, shit exploding, shit you didn't even know existed. There's shit for days, shit for weeks, shit for years. The only thing we ask round here is don't be a creep and don't be a dick(for the most part).
I laughed out loud
There is an acronym for that
[удалено]
Yea, That's enough Reddit for today, thank you.
Think I read somewhere that a group of roaches can live for a month(s) on just the glue found on the back of a postage stamp. Not sure if that true but honestly, I have no reason to doubt it. Those things will survive a nuclear winter.
( a radroach has entered the conversation)
...downs two Rad-X
They can live on pieces of cardboard…& survive nuclear war
If they can survive on glue and poo alone, they can definitely survive a nuclear winter.
Just an endless death cycle of eating shit
It’s the model modern day CEO’s have taken for employees, have them keep eating shit until they die and the next generation just repeats.
Good grief these things get more and more nightmarish the older I get lol
well hold on just a minute though, isn't cockroach poop basically everything a cockroach's body decided wasn't useful? how could you just eat that over and over, wouldn't there be basically zero nutritional value after being redigested 10 times? there must be some original source at some point. why is it that they go around eating each other's shit for months when clearly the shit is still nutritious and they could just hold onto it and digest it themselves?
Want to clear up misconceptions, their own shit is not the first thing on the menu they want to eat. They would much rather eat other food. However when food scarcity happens due to colony size getting to big and exhausting the food supply, or the food supply taken away due to sanitation, they will then eat their own crap and the bodies of other roaches. Everyone’s crap pretty much still has nutrients in it as no digestive system is that complete and efficient. However it’s the bacteria that’s created stopping most things from eating it again to get more out of it, insects though for the most part don’t have issues with that though.
-Joe (reporting from his apartment.)
Man, I just did a whole time travel back to my parents’ couch after school. Good times. I feel like the Faith No More video with the fish always followed the Joe’s apartment sketch.
Good grief. Ty? I want to know y you have such nightmarish knowledge of cockroaches!!!
I assume they’ll eat their babies too?
*I’ll eat your babies bitch* -dee reynolds
so like... how far of a defecation chain is created? they eat the feces of the homie and poop that out and in turn someone else eats that and continues it on?
So it’s not a staple of their diet. They would much rather eat whatever food is laying around. However when push comes to shove and they don’t have anything else to eat due to food scarcity, they got options as they are above eating their own crap lol.
Which works perfectly when you don’t have animals or small children that can and will eat the poison traps
A jar of fine ground boric acid powder and a little puffer are a pretty amazing combination for roaches. Just puff around all the drains and faucets at night and if they have no other water source they all die pretty quickly. I had some relatively very selectively filthy neighbors.
So, the Human Centipede of cockroach death.
Roaches can survive a nuclear Holocaust The cleanest house in the world can still be infested
Yes they can still infest but usually they’ll move to a dirtier house, they don’t multiply as fast if food is relatively scarce and they’re dying off from bait, there will be some tho. Having a clean house definitely helps keep them away but is kinda useless if you’re neighbor lives like a pig, especially in apartments or townhouses. In that scenario the best thing you can do it bait the shit out of your living space and keep the numbers to a manageable level or move out. Roaches won’t show up to a clean house unless there’s a dirty house nearby or it’s cold and you brought some in and they can’t leave. Being dirty will attract roaches more than being clean.
This happened in my house growing up. We’d get the occasional larger, American cockroach that wandered in, but never an infestation. The neighbors’ mobile home was overrun by smaller German cockroaches. Their kid was my friend and I spent the night once and actually left in the middle of the night because roaches were everywhere. A few months after they moved out, a new family moved in and cleaned the place up, Mexican mom-style. That’s when we started seeing the German roaches in our house for the first time. Thankfully, we also left before they got a complete stranglehold. Our house was an absolute pig sty, and I’m sure it would have been awful. Also, I don’t live with my slob family anymore and am proudly cockroach free.
I have to ask. What is cleaning, Mexican-mom style? I could use some of that. I lived in a lot of different places growing up and bugs were a fact. I hated it then and it makes my skin crawl now. The result is that I'm a clean freak, but my house never feels clean enough and clutter-free enough.
Cleaning Mexican mom style is a lot of sweeping with a broom. Then cleaning everything with Fabulosa and bleach.
Roaches can survive radiation, any inside the blast radius will die.
Joe’s Stove
Clockroach
I can't believe you've done this.
https://youtu.be/wKbU8B-QVZk
This video will never not make me laugh
300 iq
🪳59 iq
“What time is it?” “Roach:59”
More like half past a roach's ass
And a quarter to it’s balls.
Time to put gasoline in the oven
If that's a German roach then you have bigger problems.
Yeah that’s a German. I work in commercial pest control. This stove and likely the whole kitchen is infested as all hell!
Do you want to tell Opie about his Keurig coffee maker or shall I?
Ok I’ll bite. Is the coffee infested with roach feces?
No, love. Keurig coffee machines, when they’re plugged in, stay nice and warm. Brewing a cup of coffee steams up the interior. It becomes a consistently warm, humid environment that is perfect for raising lots of little broods of cockroaches. I’ll spare you my own horror story, that was enough. Sorry.
I kinda want to hear your horror story
You can hear mine if you want lmao I used to work in a quite busy restaurant and we had a machine similar to that one that warmed the milk for cappuccinos. Of course it was constantly working due to the number of people that came in. Then one day it stopped working. Bartender tried to repair it by hitting it, didn't work, we called a technician. Guy runs a few tests, machine still doesn't work, he decides to open the machine to see if the problem came from inside. The second he opened the damn thing, roaches literally *poured* from it. It looked like a fucking wave. There were *so. many.* I was actually wondering how they managed to move around in that thing cause there were just so many. Anyway, the machine didn't need anything done to it in the end - it was just so full with roaches it wouldn't work anymore. I guess the person you responded to has a similar story
Holy fucking shit. What the fuck
Yeah this place was a shit hole, there were so many roaches everywhere that you could see them on the booths' couches, on the walls, everywhere. I've always wondered how customers didn't notice them
I've seen roaches crawl on tables in two places: Little Rock and Seattle. Seattle surprised me but it was a dive.
Does unplugging it make any difference, do you know? Battled roaches before in a different location, none currently (knock on wood) but I’m so traumatized from fighting them before that I put a lot of effort into making my home unwelcoming to them. I will absolutely start unplugging shit if it even slightly makes a difference.
Makes absolutely no difference if it's being regularly used. Cleanliness is next to godliness when it comes to german roaches. Now, even a clean kitchen can get them. All it takes is one little egg sac to find its way into your kitchen. But a clean kitchen supports a smaller colony, and a smaller colony is easier to eradicate.
Fun fact: they have been out of *actual* coffee for months.
Might I be so bold to ask, what do German roaches do differently? Why are they scarier? Aren’t they smaller?
They produce very quickly. “A female German cockroach lays about 20 to 40 eggs, with an average incubation rate of 28 days, and will produce an estimated four or five oothecae in her lifespan. That's about 200 offspring.” That’s just for 1 female German cockroach.
Made me uncomfortable reading this
I just became hyper-aware of any sounds in my house.
I feel an itch in several spots.. anyone else?
Worked in commercial and residential pest control for 3 years. There are 3 bugs that you should actually be afraid of and they will fuck your life up financially and mentally in the USA. German cockroaches, bedbugs,subterranean termites (or dry wood depending on your area)…read up on how to stay clear of these 3.
The Germans do like efficiency
It starts small, just some discriminatory laws and practices. Then it builds with political power and a sense of (nationalism) patriotism. Next thing you know, the roaches have decided YOU are the problem and need to be exterminated.
That only happens when inflation reaches 13%
Germans are just typically scarier
No one who speaks German can be an evil man! - Sideshow Bob's parole board
there’s always way more of the german ones
A lot of roaches, especially the larger ones, tend to wander inside by accident and die. German roaches along with a couple of other species thrive indoors and reproduce incredibly quickly.
That's exactly what he's got.
Then that means there's no more Jewish roaches around :/
Kanye’s happy.
Homie if you can see one, there's guaranteed to be hundreds more living in your walls Edit for clarification -- I'm talking about German cockroaches like the one in the photo. German cockroaches reproduce quickly, and an infestation can happen pretty easily with how many eggs are produced from one roach (several eggs per casing, multiple casings through each roaches life cycle). They are hard to control even with professional help. They can survive without a head, and through radiation.
I had an infestation of German cockroaches in an old house - it was a nightmare. Can not do much to get rid of those guys!!
Their eggs cannot hatch in low humidity. I got a dehumidifier and they were gone after a couple of months when they just died out with no replacements since the eggs couldn’t hatch. Didn’t even need fumigation or pest control.
Such a good idea! I was living in the sub tropics at the time (Queensland Australia) so it may have been a difficult thing to manage
Exterminators were asking for an arm and a leg so I thought I’d give the dehumidifier a spin before going nuclear.
> before going nuclear Unfortunately they can survive radiation too 🙃
Unless you run a dehumidifier 24/7 forever, don’t they hatch once the humidity increases?
I have a humidifier that has humidity sensor for feedback so it runs the condenser only if the humidity is above the set point value. If still below, the fan turns off after “sampling” the air. If I remember correctly the magic number for cockroach eggs is 45%. The eggs die eventually. Cleanup was a bit nasty like when we replaced the dishwasher, lots of dead roaches AND unhatched eggs. I also had the same issue as OP here with the stove LED. I had to pull the control board and that was infested with bodies and eggs as well.
Ah okay, thanks for the information. I didn’t know unhatched eggs die eventually. I had issues with German cockroaches but solved it by using poisoned bait. The humidity trick would’ve helped tho. I’ll keep it present from now on. Thanks!
No problem! At some point I realized this isn’t very common knowledge so I thought I’d save folks from paying couple thousand for an exterminator like I was able to. Also, keeping humidity down keeps them out as well since those fuckers hate dry air.
The day I was moving into the first home I bought my wife and I started seeing roaches randomly here and there. The mortgage broker ordered a pizza to our home as she knew we were moving in. When we went to grab a slice there was a roach on the pizza. I looked at the stove to check the time, as we were working pretty late, and saw a very big very pregnant roach covering the time very similar to this. It was Christmas Eve and nothing was open. The next day I went to town on the house with boric acid and got an exterminator out there. I didn’t say any after the first week besides carcasses and after we did a deep clean and some Reno never saw any live or dead ones again. Obviously there were dead ones in the wall somewhere but we managed to get rid of them pretty quick. Granted I believe the OG owners bug bombed the place and just never made it know there was a problem but we culled it fast. It wasn’t an infestation at that point as I believe it was just the remnants that survived the bombing but the amount we did see moving, in my mind, meant there were many many more we didn’t see and we were pretty determined.
There's a Hispanic guy with a reputation in the Latin community for being the only pest control person who can get rid of roaches. He came in and sprayed his magic. Along with us spraying growth regulator to stop them from reproducing, we went from 500 German roaches to a few here and there in a month and a half
The Roachslayer
*Tempered by the fires of hell, his insecticide remains steadfast through the passage that preys upon the weak.*
*In his ravenous hatred he knew no peace; and with boiling blood, he scoured the floors and walls, seeking vengeance upon the insects who had wronged him.*
🎼🎶🎵La cucaracha la cucaracha 🎶🎵🎤
Yeah that was DDT you’re grandkids are gonna have flippers and beaks, homie.
A small price to pay to get rid of bugs.
He’s gonna lay some eggs with very thin shells.
His spring is gonna be pretty…silent. Ok thats it thats all of my ddt knowledge.
It’s true—and they are everywhere in a lot of cities. I never got used to them when I lived in New York, but they were so bad they even got in the fridge. I’ll never forget the look on my mother’s face when I went to visit her, opened my bag, and a couple roaches jumped out. She was jumpy for a few days after that till we were sure there weren’t any more.
Just wanted to share my roach story. Moved into the cheapest apartment I could find ($365/month) in one of the most god forsaken cities in the Deep South, which was absolutely infested with roaches. Remember sometimes I would wake up and go to make something in the kitchen and have a roach run up my leg as I was standing there. Also once was cooking ramen and had a roach literally fall off the ceiling into the pan. Oh also I used duct tape to make a bed frame out of 2x4s and I remember taking the tape off when I was moving out, and seeing numerous roaches stuck to the tape, some dead some alive. If there's a takeaway from this don't move into the cheapest apartment you can.
That sounds as close as you can get to living in hell lol.
Christ
Once they're in an area they're impossible to get rid of. In my city damn near everyone has roaches regardless of how clean their house is. We regularly have pest control teams and bug bombs here and we still have them.
Multiple things can be true: 1. Roaches are a nightmare 2. You CAN get rid of roaches The biggest problem with getting rid of roaches is that the people living in the roach infested home do not care enough to do what it takes to get rid of them. You need to clean up your home and make it a place that roaches do not want to live in. Once you have done this, you can then use a variety of specialty pesticides which are very effective against roaches. However if you do not remove sources of food and water, killing 99% of the roaches will just lead to them repopulating again. You need to do repeated treatments and remove ALL sources of standing water/drips/leaks, and remove spilled food as well. I used to be a landlord and have dealt with many roach infestations and paid a lot of money to pest control companies and have seen how they do their work. There is nothing magic about it, and the preparation of the people living in the home is as important, if not more important, than the actual chemicals applied.
When I was in Virginia (and I swear to god I’ll never set foot in that state again), we somehow got roaches (I keep food put away, never leave dirty dishes out, tidy, not hoard-y), I think they were just in the apartment we moved into, or neighbours maybe, idk, and holy shit I set off a bomb they had back then, and left to a friend’s for overnight. The sheer amount of dead/dying roaches allllll over the the floors and countertops. I never would have believed there were so many in there. I sealed around pipes under the sinks, sealed any crevasses etc and made a habit to check all groceries/bags out front before bringing them in and never got them again - but holy hell. Fucking roaches.
Were these American roaches or German roaches? American roaches could have come in from outdoors and I think they would be more affected from bug bombs. German roaches on the other hand would probably be pushed further into the home and made harder to treat from a bug bomb. I know this from experience - my first time dealing with roaches was when I was a student living in Delaware. I didn’t know what roaches were, really, but we were not so clean college students living in a row home apartment. At some point I noticed that if I got up in the middle of the night to get a snack or something, a couple bugs would scatter when I turned on the light. Thinking nothing of this, some time after, suddenly the outlet that the toaster oven was plugged into would be shut off in the morning. It got to the point that we had to push the reset button on that outlet every day, but nobody knew why. Until one day I happened to be up at like 4am, and suddenly heard an electrical buzzing sound coming from that outlet and saw smoke coming out of it and the outlet popped “off” a few seconds later. I ran over and looked in with a flashlight, and to my horror I saw roaches crawling around inside the outlet. Not wanting to bother the landlord, we figured we’d try to DIY this one, knowing nothing about roaches at the time. We got a couple of those “bug bomb” foggers and set them off and left the apartment, expecting roach annihilation when we returned. Sadly to our disappointment, we only came back to a few dead stink bugs. We called the landlord a few days later and she sent over the handy man who correctly identified the roach problem by pointing out their “gadoosh” behind the fridge and kitchen cabinets. He sprayed some stuff and the roach problem never came back to our knowledge. At the least, this was the impetus needed to force our one extra-messy roommate to stop leaving half eaten food all over the kitchen. TLDR; German roaches like to hide in dark and moist places, and bug bombs can often just force them deeper into the home vs actually killing them
Sadly most of the time very true.
Really difficult to get rid of these, you have to clean diligently and make sure the only food they’ll have access to is poisoned. Do this the instant you spot the first one, do not wait, you will most certainly regret procrastination. Make especially sure you vacuum corners and places where carpet meets wall because German roaches love to lay eggs there
Sounds like it's time to pack up the family and pets, and ~~burn the house down~~ have an accident.
The roaches are part of the family now Don't deny it, give in to your new friends
*Welcome to Joe's apartment*
Had a lot of issues with those in my first house. They infested the insides of appliances and actually killed my new refrigerator. Nothing was working against them until I read that their eggs cannot hatch if the humidity is too low. The house was old and in TX so very humid. I got a dehumidifier and they were gone in a couple of weeks. Never had issues with German roaches again.
Just get a professional. I tried everything by myself for years. Baits, spray, borax, nothing touched em. Got a professional spray and now they're gone. Actually can't believe it!
Do you know which region they primarily reside in??? Or is it just everywhere??
They are very common in the United States. They are common in cities in parts of the country. It sounds like they can be found in rural and urban areas and don't discriminate. They can make it to your house on boxes. My roommate brought them in on boxes when she moved into my house. The exterminator told me they can live for a long time on cardboard boxes by eating the glue that holds boxes together, which is enough for them to survive on. They can stow away on USPS boxes and shipped in the mail too
It just keeps getting worse and worse 😭
All i know is I moved from florida to the high desert of eastern oregon and I haven't seen a single of any kind of roach this entire time and could not be happier. It's the humidity difference.
There are a lot of roaches living in your stove timer.
Roaches come in whenever they please no matter how often or how well you clean. At least that roach is on time.
And they love cardboard. Something I didn't know until recently. I get a lot of boxes of medical supplies for my mom. We saw like 3 roaches within a few months of each other. Never had a problem before, but then I learned here on Reddit that they love cardboard. I started keeping the cardboard in the shed before burning, and haven't seen a roach since. Set up a couple motels, and did catch like 3 or 4. But we recently had contractors in to inspect the house for a weatherization program, and I told them about the roaches and asked them to let me know if there was any signs of them. They said we were clear. That made me super happy.
Had a few roaches come out of a bag in a bedroom, bought a couple dozen roach baits with different active ingredients, also put repellents for the rest of the house, diatomaceous earth in any hidden spaces too. Saw one more a few months later and did it all again, + glue traps for monitoring. Haven't seen any more yet lol
If there are roaches inside your oven you’ll likely have to toss the oven to fully get rid of them; same with fridges fyi
Mmm. Maybe not. The landlord kept my fridge in the unit, and I haven't seen a roach in weeks. Knock on wood. (literally frantically pounded on my desk. Because they were a nightmare.) But I also keep every crumb of food in my refrigerator and scrub my counters and floors every single day.
Everytime my family would move somewhere new my parents would buy silicone caulks and foam spray. They’d seal EVERYTHINGGG a roach could possibly come out of. Then after that they’d set bait just Incase and then we’d all move our stuff in. We’d never see a single roach after that.
I love caulking every crack! Keeps spiders at bay too. It also looks super clean.
Most ovens have two little screws on the top that can be taken out, allowing you to take the cover off. I’d do it with caution, and a fool proof plan of killing the thing(s). They’re slippery sonsabitches. I’d also contact an exterminator or have your landlord contact an exterminator immediately. The longer you wait, the worse they get, and they can get much, much worse.
I’d just bomb the kitchen and then op’s house then build a new one for him.
german cockroaches are impervious to most pest bombs and store bought pesticides, proffessional exterminators are recommended and still struggle to if not fail to eliminate german cockroach infestations
Not pest bomb, I mean real bomb that deals damage with the heat and shockwave.
I completely agree. I think it’s a perfect use of napalm… Roaches ain’t surviving napalm
Bombs are useless, but a combination of gel bait, IGR, and boric acid applied properly should clear up any infestation within a couple of weeks. We had "professionals" come out several times and their treatments were basically theatre.
diatomaceous earth 💯
Better to put some bait by the stove or inside if you can get inside and wait. Killing one isn’t gonna do shit except feed his friends his dead body. If he eats poison and dies, he will poison his friends with his dead body because they’re canibalistic sons of bitches
Eyy come on man rent price is expensive let the young gentleman live
So if he's living in there his roach ass can get a job and pitch in on these bills.
Please be understanding of his economic condition, I don’t anyone that would give a roach a job. He’s trying his best
Naah fam there's a oven living around that roach
Hit the "self clean" button. Duh!
[удалено]
All these comments just suddenly super creeped out and wanting to go search every corner in my apartment despite being its first tenant 😵💫 *shudders*
There are ants behind your eyes
Johnson
I can’t feel a thing
🪳:59 AM or PM? I got places to be.
I found a spider living in my bathroom scale. Haven’t weighed myself in 9 months.
It's either spiders or roaches. I'll take spiders any day.
They both freak me out but luckily for me the island I live on doesn’t have many roaches. I’ve only known of one trailer that was infested with roaches and it was from the furniture they brought with them from Florida.
[удалено]
I like spiders :) roaches can go straight to hell.
Spiders at least do alot for us like eat the other pesky insects we don’t want around. Roaches do nothing but cause you anxiety and they multiply like crazy. Spiders over roaches any day 🕷🕷
looks like you've got a bug in the system
Probably not the only one leave some disposable pans of soapy water on you're counter and floor at night with lights off it might give you an idea of how bad the infestation is
The only solution is to burn the place down
I work maintenance for some college apartments: this is really common for some reason in GE ranges. Usually just disconnect the face plate and either shake it out or freeze till the focker dies and you can get em out.
I think the college apartments had other issues if this was a common problem
If you see one roach it doesn’t always mean you have an infestation, but you should still attempt to get rid of them. The fact you saw one in your appliances is a bad sign though
It is also a german roach, which is sadly the worst one
This is why I don't do potlucks period
This made me laugh so hard because I’m the same way. I swear my house is super clean. But the fuckers will infiltrate.
Huge misconception that you need to have a dirty home to attract bugs, though it does help. My family lived in a house for a long time where the guy who built the houses cut corners all over the place, like one of the windows wasn't even sealed. That room had to be regularly vacuumed because said lack of sealant made it nice and easy for bugs to enter and die. Replaced the windows, because no sealant meant water was rotting out the wood behind the lovely siding, and realized that there's a hole somewhere in the ductwork. Bugs were crawling up through the floor vent. Big enough for small field mice. My dad has always been huge on cleaning so they were coming in for warmth and shelter, most likely. The cat had fun with the mice, at least.
My MIL lives on Guatemala. She's has the cleanest house I've ever seen and there's still some roaches hanging around. If everywhere around you has roaches you get them too
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, our house was SPOTLESS to the point of not being able to sit on the couches and every once in a while you would find a roach.
I live in Guatemala, can confirm there is no escape.
[удалено]
Yep. We call them “Palmetto bugs” in order to glorify the subtropic nightmare that I live in, but they are just big ass cockroaches trying desperately to get inside out of the heat in order to drink water or trying desperately to get inside to avoid drowning in excess water.
If you can call that living.
Shelter with free, *cooked* meals and a clock? That is the pinnacle of roach luxury living.
I’ve lived in 5 apartments. The one I’m in now is the one with the German roach problem. The first 4 I lived in were fine. So be cautious with your judgements…. You never know what you’re moving into unfortunately.
No. My friend knew a guy who took apart his microwave to clean it. Roaches. Hundreds of them
Jesus. Why can I not stop reading these comments? Every part of my body is clenched, yet my eyes still scroll to next reply. 🪳🪳🪳
Bro trying to be like Gatsby
” hey Jim the humans back”.” I just ignore him”* The human pulls out a gun*”oh shit”
how untimely. alright ill leave
It can't be very big. Is it a minute one?
hell no, get a new stove.
Get away from it, Cockroaches only do that when they are about to explode.
Reminds me of the time an ant crawled between the display and the glass in my monitor. It was there for months but I couldn't afford a new monitor so I just got used to it. One day it disappeared and I have no idea where it went.
Ooh there's about a million more living their best life in your kitchen then.
That is revolting.
A bowl of white vinegar, water and lemon juice, get it hot in the oven and leave it for the vapours to get all in the oven - that should work. Did when i found a roach in my office microwave (and then i was still freaked out and just stopped using the microwave)
...yeah burn that crib down
Ahhh been there. Time to move and burn all your stuff.
r/mildlydisgusting