A cockroach question, if I may (Raleigh, Wilmington: for sale, renters, motel)

[lovebrentwood]

I've rarely seen cockroaches, but in the past week, I've seen two of the giant black ones that have personalities. They're not just bugs. They're beings.

I think because we have dogs, they must have run into the house when a door was briefly left open and because they seek warmth in the cooler temperatures.

So maybe it's because of the changing weather you've seen them.

However, if they are small cockroaches and it's a rental, I'd absolutely demand that the property owner get a professional exterminator there immediately. You may or may not get them again in the spring. Some people need to spray regularly, and some don't. You just have to wait and see.

If you see a few of those little rascals, there are probably many dozens more.

Which reminds me of a story I told here three years ago, copied below. Don't allow yourself to get PTCD, like I have... If nothing else, you can see how they might multiply if you don't get them exterminated now...

My Cockroach Story

Years ago. Another state. Another house. Another life.

One morning, while still in my flannel nightgown, I opened a small broom closet in the kitchen where I’d loosely stacked about 30 paper grocery bags.

I pulled one out, and a dozen or so cockroaches scattered.

I was in bare feet and screamed like a crazy person at the thought that one might touch my bare skin.

I ran and got shoes, but the the only ones I could find were high heels.

I then ran around the kitchen to find roach-attacking equipment: An oven mitt. A pair of tongs. A can of Raid.

So, like a maniac on a mission, I started spraying and pulling out the bags.

It was a cockroach HIGH RISE. Each “floor” (folded bag) had roaches at different stages of their lives: Eggs. Babies. Children. Mothers. Fathers. Grandparents. Aunts and uncles. All were highly perturbed that I was disturbing their happy commune. There were thousands of residents.

They ran, and they ran fast. I sprayed and squashed them in my high heels. Over and over and over again.

Then the floor became slippery with bug spray and cockroach corpses.

So I was standing there in my flannel nightgown, juggling bug spray, an oven mitt, and a pair of tongs, while sliding around like an ice skater in my high heels, scared to death that I might fall and be covered with bug-spray-covered bug bodies.

But what could I do? Husband had left for work.

It was up to me to save the the world, I mean the house, from this scourge.

It took me almost an hour to remove, squash, spray, and destroy the entire cockroach complex.

Previously, I had never in my life even seen a cockroach. I was proud that I had stepped up (and stepped down) and done what had to be done. I never saw one again.

(The roaches had ridden home from the store in the folds of the paper grocery bags. From then on, I responded, "Plastic" to the question, "Paper or plastic?")

Many years later, when I moved to Raleigh, I self-diagnosed a disorder: PTCD: Post-Traumatic-Cockroach Disorder. All the will, the energy, and the skill needed to decimate those cockroaches were all used up in that long hour many years ago.

Now, in the extremely rare instances I’ve seen cockroaches here in the South, I can’t handle it and scream like a 2-year-old. If I can’t find dear sweet husband to do the dirty deed, I find a broom or anything that will keep me as far away from the horrid bug and smash it repeatedly until it is dead, screaming and alarming the dogs all the while.

The End

Originally Posted by Sonorio

Hello there.

When I moved into my rental house, I encountered cockroaches. It was a shocking and unpleasant first experience for me but people on this forum say that it's pretty normal around here.

So I've been hosing the place with bug spray, not wanting to really set up until I got ahead of the bugs. That seems to be happening now, but I'm wondering whether it's because I made my living space so toxic that they don't want to be here or whether cockroaches have gone out of season -- hibernating or flying south for the winter or whatever.

I'm afraid to ask but should I expect the ebb to end in Spring?

Thanks

S

[hazother1]

Just my 2 cents. Both me and my parents had cockroaches (the larger kind) in a nice apt in Cary. We killed about 1-2 a week all year. They sprayed regularly and put those boxes in the apt. That didn't do any good. Frankly, who's to say what the neighbor is doing and if they care about cockroaches. Both of us bought houses this year in the spring, and we haven't seen 1 cockroach in either of our homes (both homes 5 years old or less....in Cary and Apex)

[butterflies1375]

Originally Posted by hazother1

Just my 2 cents. Both me and my parents had cockroaches (the larger kind) in a nice apt in Cary. We killed about 1-2 a week all year. They sprayed regularly and put those boxes in the apt. That didn't do any good. Frankly, who's to say what the neighbor is doing and if they care about cockroaches. Both of us bought houses this year in the spring, and we haven't seen 1 cockroach in either of our homes (both homes 5 years old or less....in Cary and Apex)

You might not see them if you live in a newer subdivision where they cut down most of the trees and such. They seem to like more wooded areas the best. The big ones that is. The little ones, they aren't real picky.

[Sonorio]

Yeah. I deliberately rented a house because in any apartment building you go to, your neighbors are the class of people who have always had cockroaches and just consider them to be free pets.

And let me say this: If my landcouple sent a professional exterminator here, I'd be at the front door with a shotgun. I've heard multiple stories of those guys carrying a jar of bedbugs in their pocket, and once those things get loose, the only thing you can do is put everything you own on the curb.

And I am not the kind of person who could replace everything I own with one trip to a mall. Most of my stuff is collectable, customized, or both.

S

PS Last week a few German cockroaches showed up among the Americans. Always glad to do my part towards multicultural extermination.

[architect77]

I also have that roach discorder. Back in college 1988, my friends and I rented an old mobile home on a wooded street in Emerald Isle, NC. The first time we entered the house and opened the kitchen cabinets, about 50 giant palmetto bugs fell onto our heads. During the night I would wake up with a 4-inch long roach on my back in my bed. They were everywhere. One night I was there alone while my two roommates were up in Raleigh taking exams, and one crawled into a smoke detector making it go off. Can you imagine being alone in a 25-year old trailer and the smoke detector going off at 2am? It was a couple of hours before I could be certain that one of those buggers was the culprit.

Now here in Atlanta I scream like a girl when I see one of these monster roaches in my 6th floor apartment (like last Friday night).

But at least y'all don't have brown recluse spiders in Raleigh like we do in Atlanta, which is the beginning of their south-central US territory. Back in 2004 there was one under the sheets in my bed of my ground-floor apartment. They scurry around at lightning speed. Horror!

[NM posts]

These stories are making me want to scream! I have an extreme reaction to them - not to other bugs, only roaches. I've seen two large ones since I moved into my Durham house a month ago. One was Sunday morning. It was my birthday. I woke up to find one on the ceiling. Happy birthday to me.

I'm kind of worried that they hitched a ride in my boxes from Wilmington, where my lovely live-oak lined street was riddled with them (they love those oaks). I went to extreme measures to keep them out, including wrapping stacks of boxes in plastic drop cloths. I didn't see a huge number inside in Wilmington, but it was a 1940s house and there was only so much I could do there.

Worst roach experience: I'd just moved to the Wilmington house, and was sitting on the sofa using my laptop on my lap. Typing away, and then I see a pair of antennae at the top of my laptop screen, then a roach head. Thing was crawling up my laptop. FREAKED OUT, threw my laptop across the room at the wall, roach ran away (it was HUGE), I was thinking not only did I break my computer but it didn't even kill the roach.
Computer lived (thanks, HP!) and I finally found it and killed it.

I put all other bugs outside but I become a homicidal maniac around roaches.

Here in Durham I'm battling camel crickets in my shed (the crickets are winning) and I need to prepare for the copperheads in summer. There are also a lot of wolf spiders around. I live in a wooded area with a creek nearby.

[MikeJaquish]

Originally Posted by NorasMom

...
Computer lived (thanks, HP!) and I finally found it and killed it.

...

Wow...
Oh, well, apparently killing your laptop was less traumatic for it than lowering it 20 feet in a plexiglass box in front of a horde of sober, bear stew-eating, cross-dressing truckers.
NC judge halts Brasstown's Opossum Drop - State - NewsObserver.com

[saturnfan]

Here's my roach story.

We knew all about roaches from living in New Orleans but one apartment in Raleigh even blew us away.

Apparently there was a sewer leak under the slab and we were deluged with all sizes of roaches. The exterminator came every week with no results.

Sealing openings in the walls for pipes/wires stopped the big ones that were dropping out of the HVAC vents in the ceiling. The little ones kept coming in waves.

The incompetent manager said roaches take months to be controlled. I said Bullfeathers since my late uncle ran an exterminating company in Florida.

We finally threatened a lawsuit and were released from our lease.

One of my cats still swats the wall when she sees a shadow thinking it's a roach.

One tip. A Miele vacuum is powerful enough to suck in and instantly kill any roach on the ceiling or high up on the wall. Sad way to have to learn this, eh.

[NM posts]

Originally Posted by MikeJaquish

Wow...
Oh, well, apparently killing your laptop was less traumatic for it than lowering it 20 feet in a plexiglass box in front of a horde of sober, bear stew-eating, cross-dressing truckers.
NC judge halts Brasstown's Opossum Drop - State - NewsObserver.com

:-O

So very wrong...

...also apologies for my multiple grammar errors - I will blame lack of coffee (yes, that's it)

Saturnfan - that is the stuff of horror films.

[MikeJaquish]

Originally Posted by NorasMom

:-O

So very wrong...

...also apologies for my multiple grammar errors - I will blame lack of coffee (yes, that's it)

Saturnfan - that is the stuff of horror films.

Always blame the lack of coffee! We can all empathize!