Win the Fight Against Cockroaches
I had let down my guard. Not seeing even a single sign of an invader in the six months in my new apartment had lulled me into a false sense of security. So any urgency I should have felt when I casually saw the gaping, open house invitation otherwise known as the bathtub drain, I didn’t. The mere seconds it would have taken to plug the drain would have relieved me of the certain fright that was to come.
Defenses laid down, I was in that misty level of pre-sleep; relaxed, thinking happy thoughts. It was into this tranquil scene the intruder crept. Perhaps it did not creep, maybe it ran fearlessly up and out of that drain. But I perceive roaches to be sneaky creatures, roaming in the cover of darkness, smugly confident they will not be detected in their brown camouflage uniforms.
Oh no! Something moved on the back of my neck. In a nano second, I was no longer even remotely sleepy and hurriedly considered the possible reasons for the movement and discarding them just as rapidly.
1.) It can’t be a strand of hair as my hair is short;
2.) It can’t be a nightgown spaghetti strap gone berserk because that was not the night’s chosen sleepwear.
The last possibility my fevered brain could conceive I just as quickly knew was not possible either.
3). I did not have on a necklace whose pendant had inched its way to the far side of my neck. There was only one, last horrifying possibility – it was something alive!!!!
Yes, I leapt out of bed with a speed and alacrity that would astonish everyone who knows me, grabbed madly at the lightswitch, hoping against all hope that I would not see what I knew with dread that I would surely see.
A B52, aka a giant cockroach. Sitting on my pillow – right where my head had been. It sat still for me to take a good look, moving its little feelers with a bravado that infuriated me. Miraculously, it only walked a few more inches down my pillow (yuck!), while my eyes cased the room for the some ammo. Simultaneously praying, shuddering, and trying not to scream or cry like the big baby that I am, I grabbed what I considered an AK47 amount of Kleenex – a sufficiently thick wad of tissue so as to prevent me from being able to feel the thing wiggle at all, nor catch any glimpse of its body again.
Kleenex and courage in hand, I did a drop, roll and squeeze on the unblinking stalker and without thinking and with a giant shudder, flushed the whole parcel down the toilet. Then I flushed the toilet again after wondering if I had even maimed it at all, and somehow, unscathed, it would scramble its way back up the drain and instigate Round 2.
Sure I plugged the drain then! That barn door was firmly closed now! A little late, but closed! Like teenage boys endlessly running their computers to hack their way past all security barriers, the prospect of uncountable numbers of roaches, large and small, persistently and tirelessly seeking ways to enter our living spaces promises to keep me ever vigilant from this day forward. I will plug the drains when I am not using the sinks.
Living in the tropics, you either learn to live with roaches, and put up a fight. I learned to fight and eventually learned that it is possible to win the fight even in a tropical climate if a few steps and precautions are taken.
Before you rent or buy a place, train your eyes to spot the trouble signs. Hopefully, you will be able to view an empty place in the daylight hours. Very important!!!! If you spot a live roach at this time and are not absolutely desperate to find a place – run to the nearest exit!! Roaches seen in the daytime indicate an infestation. Meaning – there are so many of them, they are absolutely fearless! They are not afraid for you to see them. They have the whole strength in numbers energy working for them.
If however, there are no other options for you but to snap up that particular place, know up front that your roach fighting may at first be more like warfare than casual skirmishes.
Other signs of roach tenancy when you’re househunting; lots of black roachtraps or gluetraps in various stages of maturity stuck in cupboards, on walls, etc.
Take a good, hard look at the kitchen and bathroom cupboards. Roaches love these rooms because they need water to live. If there is or has been a roach legion encamped there, you will find lots of blackish specks of roach poop glued all over in the cracks, edges and most especially corners. You can derive a kind of dubious consolation from finding only dead roaches, but ideally, you won’t see any of them or any signs of them.
What on earth can you do? What should you do? What must you do??? Some people can co-exist with roaches. Others cannot. Some people think roaches are harmless, but they aren’t! They carry germs around (who knows where they have been) and studies have shown that their feces is harmful. Children living with roaches have higher rates of asthma.
First the defensive. If you see live roaches in daylight hours, this indicates a serious problem. Serious problems require serious solutions. Call the pest control service. They will spray everything and everywhere you may not be able to reach on your own without one of those magic wands.
If you have not seen live roaches in the daytime and the cupboards seem to look and smell (roaches leave a very distinctive smell) pretty good, but you see trouble signs like old roachtraps, etc, it is likely a job you can do yourself.
Before you move in one item into your place, bomb it! The extra day you need for this is well worth it. Set off a roach bomb or however many are needed for the square footage. Come back the next day armed with more ammo in the form of bug spray and cleaning supplies. The number of victims affected by the bomb will either encourage you or discourage you. Why would you not be happy about a high body count? Because roaches lay eggs, and the unborn roachies may be born a few weeks later. One female roach can produce as many as 2,000,000 babies each year!!!!
First wash out all the cupboards with something strong like ammonia or a cleaner with bleach. Roaches do not like ammonia or bleach. Let the cupboards dry, and then lightly spray all the corners, cracks and holes with a food-safe bug spray. Let the spray dry while you tackle the other important areas.
If you kill off the roaches in your abode, and make their entryways into your place difficult and hazardous, all you will have to deal with eventually are any subsequent offspring that survived the bombs and the spray.
Get a good flashlight and look around under your sinks. Any holes or cracks around the pipes must be filled with caulk. If the holes are too large and gaping for caulk, you need to duct tape over the hole and around it until you are reasonably sure that a roach could not get though alive. In apartment buildings, this is an absolute necessity; otherwise roaches can crawl from your neighbor’s apartment into your roach-free zone and take away your peace. Block all entryways under your sinks. Spray the tops of the pipes and all the cracks and corners of the cupboards below the sink.
Roaches can also live under the bathtub, so make sure the caulk between the tub and the floor is in good condition. Fill in any areas missing caulk.
Entryways for roaches may also be found behind gas stoves (where the gas line comes in) and dishwashers. Use care when/if pulling out these appliances; you may need to seek assistance from your landlord or someone with greater expertise to maneuver these appliances.
Before you ever move in, make sure you have working plugs or stoppers for every drain and plan on getting into the habit of using them. Roaches are strong swimmers, and while that may be admirable in the insect world, you will never want to see those little roach antennae peeping out of your bathroom sink drain or overflow hole at 3 A.M. Plug your sink and tub drains when not in use, and most especially at night. You can also tape over the little overflow hole in your sink using clear parcel package tape or even masking tape.
Ongoing maintenance for roach-free living
If you live in a house, regularly spray all around the outside perimeter of your house. Watch for gaps in the caulk and fix them. If you live in an apartment, regularly spray all around the outside of your front door or other outside doors. Spray the threshold area with bug spray. Take everything out from under your sinks now and then and reinspect your plugging job, respray the pipes and corners and cracks.
The rest: Keep your food in sealed containers, don’t leave open food lying around or dirty dishes on the counter or sink. Keep the kitchen floor clean.
Final words of advice. Never give up the fight! With persistence and vigilance, you can eliminate roaches from your home and keep them and their offspring out. And hopefully, you will never be awakened by a B52 landing on your pillow.
