La Cucaracha! Rid Your Home of Roaches and More

Growing up in Tucson, Arizona we had roaches! At least once each year we would empty all the cabinets, remove all the animals from the house, and seal all the food containers before the exterminator paid us a visit. We would then spend the entire next day wiping, vacuuming, and washing everything in the house from the cabinets to the window sills. We would be pleasantly roach-free … for a few months anyway.

After those few months, we would notice the exterminator at the neighbor’s house directly next door to ours. Slowly the roaches would begin to return until it was time to repeat the two day process at our house. I figured even if the neighbors exterminated at the same time we did, we may have had longer periods of time between the invasions of the little German Cockroaches (which I liked to call “The Nazis”), but it would have taken the entire neighborhood to exterminate at the same time for any real success to end the Southwest Nazi invasion. I’m sure; even then, they would find their way home before long.

It wasn’t only the roaches we housed, but other such insects found comfort on our property such as wolf spiders and several black widow spiders. The spiders never really bothered my parents, but I had a terrible time with them. My father knew where every widow made her home in our yard.

After several years, a new critter was introduced to the United States. Several ended up in the city of Tucson. It was probably two or three years after the introduction when my father noticed his black widows were disappearing. It seemed the Nazis were leaving the area as well, or maybe being exterminated in a way we were unaware of at the time.

Geckos! They had grown in population and were surviving off the wealth of food that had been scurrying around the house each time the lights were out. The black widows were their dessert and the wolf spiders their snack while they feasted on the overabundance of reaches. Two years after the geckos populated themselves; there hasn’t been the first sign of a roach in the house where I grew up.

So put away the poisons, and stop spending all those dollars on the exterminator. If you can deal with small, nocturnal lizards that you don’t even see unless you pick up an old brick or board from the ground outside, then geckos are the way to go!

I now live in the backwoods of Florida and would like to ask if anyone out there has a gecko overpopulation problem, please send them my way.