A little freaked out - Found a cockroach outside our house!!!

[HorseFeathers]

I think it's time for a new forum...

BackYard COCKROACHES...

(Gee, I hope no one said that before me, because I am very pleased with myself for thinking of that, LOL!)

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Quote:
Thanks! You seem to know your stuff. What are the key differentiating factors between German and water roaches?

 

[CityGirlintheCountry]

Well. duh... the german roaches mutter in german. You won't be able to understand them (unless by chance you speak german cockroach dialect which is possible, I suppose).

 

[Biddylover]

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Here is a link to Orkin, it may give you the heebee geebies but it has the list of every cockroach around...... I TOLD my husband they can FLY...

http://www.orkin.com/cockroaches

 

[Biddylover]

Quote:
I actually think that is a good one

 

[HorseFeathers]

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I actually think that is a good one

Why thank you. Usually you have to be actually looking at me and hearing my dry tone of voice to get my humor.

 

[Suellyn]

Oh, ugh, ACK.... Cockroaches are my absolute KRYPTONITE

!!!

This comes from years of Zookeeping, especially around primates, where roaches (both the little "Germans" and the big "Americans") are just an absolute given... can deal with them at WORK (barely!), but has always been my nightmare that I bring one (or some eggs) HOME,

and it HAPPENED...

Here's what I did;
I took my "cues" from our pest control guys that come to the Zoo routinely!

1.) GEL BAIT, all around my laundry room (which is where I saw it, probably rode home on my Zoo Uniform

), then a week or two later used a DIFFERENT TYPE of gel bait all over again (in case there were any creepy crawlies that were, or had become, resistant to the first type!)

2.) Boric acid dusted around... in places that I felt were pretty "unavoidable" for them to walk thru on the way to food or water. We have had REALLY GREAT success with this stuff at the Zoo!

Never saw another one, thank goodness.... I probably TOTALLY overreacted, but the nightmare avoidance was well worth it!!

 

[fiberart57]

If you don't want indiscriminate insect murder, which boric acid dusted around will do, here's another option: Place some very ripe fruit outside and put a circle of boric acid around it. The roaches will walk through the boric acid to get to the fruit and then when they clean themselves- yes, they're pretty clean animals - they ingest the boric acid and the deed is done.

I have a substantial number of preying mantises and other beneficials that I don't want to lose. I'll go as far as to make a little wire cage around the bait to keep out other things.

I have a friend who lived on St. Croix for a couple of years who would make "roach balls" out of boric acid and evaporated or condensed milk and put them in hard to reach places. They attracted the roaches but not to good guys.

From what I understand, boric acid is not harmful to chickens or other warm blooded animals, especially at the amount they would ingest from eating a roach that contained it. I don't know for sure that this is true.

I get my boric acid at the pharmacy in a small bottle.

Mary