There's a roach-dead in my kitchen. What would you do?

[mayachel]

Me-I screamed and ran upstairs to wait for my fiance to come home. It was a big effort to have turned off the stove first. I left the oven on (it's on low and often goes out if it isn't watched) thinking I could come back to it once all was well-except that once I got upstairs I realized the chickpeas I was going to roast have been sitting in the strainer all afternoon-near the dead roach. No way in H E double hockey sticks are those chickpeas going anywhere but the garbage.

We are city dwellers, but this is the official "First" sighting in our home of 3 years. We already had poison out after I "thought" I saw something out of the corner of my eye about two months ago.

The last apartment we lived in- I woke up in the middle of the night to find a giant water bug in the bathroom. I refused to get out of bed at night for the rest of the time we lived there (about 6 more months).

They seriously give me a panic and I hate the risk of encountering them in my home. What do we next? In a single family attached home, is it time to call the exterminator after one?

 

[kenny]

Are you looking for recipes?

 

[Tuckins1]

Are you looking for recipes?

ROFLMAO

Don't step on them! You could squish eggs out and spread them around. Pick it up and get rid of it. Then I would bleach EVERYTHING down and try to clean up any food crumbs that might be attracting them. (Under the fridge, stove, and clean out the garbage disposal) Good luck to you!!

We will sometimes see them at work- it's a good wake-up technique at 7 AM!!

 

[marcy]

I'd scream like a little girl.

 

[Circe]

Ugh, grody.

My first college apartment was SO INFESTED that after a month, I got used to killing the grotesque little monsters with my bare hands. Seriously, it was like a competition: we'd get to the breakfast table and be like, "How many did you get? 6? That's nothing! I got 8. I get the first piece of toast!" But, helpful tips:

1) Get a Verminator. At least, that's what I call them. They're those "as seen on TV" ultrasonic doohickeys. I got one called the PestrContro100, and, even in the horrible infested apartment, inside of a month, all the roaches went away.

2) Well, almost all: once in a while, no matter how clean and Verminated your apartment is, if your neighbors are filthy, roaches will occasionally get lost; if your neighbors fumigate, roaches will flee their apartment to check out yours. In that case, stomp away. And then ....

3) Seal up and and all nooks and crannies in your apartment so they'll at least have a tougher time of it. I like: joins, seams, pipes, and doorframes.

P.S. - You have all my sympathy. The last time I saw a waterbug, my husband had a hard time talking me out of burning our home to the ground and salting the earth .....

 

[Hera]

When I used to live in a less than desirable apartment, this would occasionally happen. Some neighbors can be filthy animals. One of my neighbors never did anything about the ones, she-just lived with them . I would put out those little boxes that you can get at the grocery store that kill all of them. They always did the job. It's good to nip it in the bud early so it doesn't become an infestation.

 

[mayachel]

kenny-THANK YOU for adding some levity to my anxiety. And no, there was no more cooking to be done last night. We went out to dinner instead. (Because you KNOW restaurants NEVER have em)

marcy -check!

Tuckins1 -Ewww I didn't know that about the eggs. Luckily this one was already belly up, so just required the fiance to pick it up and toss it in a can. After your reminder we did wash down all the counter tops with bleach last night. I'm going to do the floors today.

heraanderson-Little boxes of poison-check! While I don't usually like poisoning creatures I'm of the mindset that they came into my territory!

Circe-You must be made from stronger stock than I am. I don't think I could ever touch one with bare hands. We are usually a shoe free house-and now I'm keeping a pair of slip on shoes at the entrance to the kitchen "just in case". For awhile anyway...then I'll relax and it will likely happen all over again. Hopefully it is a loooong while. Not interested in starting my own roach killing competition here.

- You have all my sympathy. The last time I saw a waterbug, my husband had a hard time talking me out of burning our home to the ground and salting the earth .....

Thank you! I am right there with you. Sounds like a good plan. If only it weren't so irrational. Me, I just told fiance it turns out we'll need to move out of the city. He didn't agree.

 

[MissMina]

First an autopsy is in order
Was it foul play or just old age?
Then hold a funeral for his/her nearest and dearest followed by a proper burial.

 

[Callisto]

That's coincidental, we found a big dead one on the porch we are house sitting for yesterday. Why do they just die in the middle of the open...? It's like it dropped dead mid scurry... Luckily mine was outside so I just shot the hose at it.

 

[doodle]

We get three inch long roaches here, no joke, and I'm terrified of them. I'll vacuum up a dead one to avoid having to come anywhere near it (then make DH empty the vacuum), and for killing them, I can wield a broom like a samurai warrior; this generally occurs with a can of hairspray in the other hand because the hairspray keeps them from flying (yeah, we have three inch long kamikaze roaches that fly at your face in Georgia). DH loves to tell people that if I'm running, there's either a cockroach or a man with a butcher knife wearing a ski mask somewhere nearby.

 

[that_someone_special]

... oh my gosh... I would run about 3 miles away from it.

Ick ick icccckkk!

I'm in the upper midwest, so I don't really see flying cockroaches... ick ...

 

[MissMina]

Those little ole things
In SC we call them Palmetto Bugs
Don't go in the woods at night
They sleep on the tree trunks

 

[mayachel]

Missmina-lol, ya know, I'm good if it was foul play. I'd hate to have been it's retirement home. We put down this poison gel along the seams of the cabinets a few months back, so I'd like to believe it worked. Actually, I'd like to believe we don't have any more-but I already can guess how that ends. My parents used to live in Texas- and were well acquainted with palmetto bugs. My mom would trap them under glasses and wait till my father came home to deal with them.

Doodle-I agree-roaches with wings faaaar more terrifying.

Callisto-I like your mid-scurry scenerio. Do they have little heart attacks? Do they have hearts? eww.

 

[atroop711]

I HATE roaches and am scared of them but don't want them invading my space. I'm brave with a can of spray in my hand. If your roach is dead, get your vacuum cleaner and suck that baby up. I won't pick it up with a tissue but have no issue using the vacuum.

 

[decodelighted]

Um, yeah. Not sure where you're going to be moving because out here in the COUNTRY ... we get mice & BATS in our houses. And just the other day I saw a photo of a kitchen in Brooklyn with a dead RACCOON's head sticking out of a drawer. (Got stuck trying to escape the child lock cabinets after chewing in from the outside). Gah!

With any luck you'll have a long, colorful, sometimes semi-grotesque life ahead of you. Here's my advice: Toughen up, cookie!

 

[Scarabnight]

Ugh I can not stand roaches!! I also had a nasty apartment that was infested, but we didn't have killing competitions, my cousin's girlfriend would just grab them and give them to cousin's dog to eat ewww!

I don't have any advise on what to do other than running and hiding since that's what I just did yesterday upon finding a wasp walking on my carpet, well first I covered it with a mug, then I ran. Luckily, Audball came over that night and killed it for me!

You could borrow Aud, but you can't keep her... her BF would starve (sorry Aud, you know it's true! )

 

[kenny]

Stir Fried Cockroach

4 or 5 cockroaches (recently frozen)
1 onion
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 tbs salt
1 tbs corn starch
4 tbs cooking oil
2 cups rice

Remove and discard the solid wing covering flaps and all legs of the cockroach.
Put the whole cockroaches into a pot of boiling oil and quickly fry for 15 seconds.

Heat a wok until hot. Add four spoons of oil and put all vegetables into it to stir fry for three minutes.
Put the half cooked cockroaches in to the wok and add salt and corn starch.

Serve on or with a bed of white rice.

Source, http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100415/cook/cook3.html

 

[Circe]

Doodle, thanks for the heads-up: I will now add Georgia to places I will only visit gingerly, right alongside Florida and (sniff!) New Orleans and, OH YEAH, New York, where I live. It's funny, I can handle cockroaches just fine now, but waterbugs/palmetto bugs still give me the screaming heebie jeebies.

Best moment ever? When I went digging behind my futon once to find my Doc Martens, picked one up, and found a dead waterbug underneath it. Apparently I flung that boot VERY fortuitously .....

P.S. - Mayachel, it was pure overexposure to get to the barehanded-killing stage, and only because I never remember to wear slippers in the house. The idea of them getting away to breed was worse than the idea of touching them!

P.P.S. - Kenny, I am NEVER coming over to your house for dinner.

 

[Arkteia]

I know it is a serious issue - I'd couple it with a now-dead mouse I recently saw in my office. And think of a proper burial. And an epitaph, something like, "we met you only once, but we'll remember you forever".

 

[lyra]

Kenny, you kill me, really.

I've never seen a cockroach in real life, so if I saw one in *my* kitchen, I think I'd abandon my house! But I understand that it's normal to have to call exterminators. I guess I would go with that and keep up the maintenance stuff. Ugh.