What do you do when creepy crawlies pay your home a visit?

Bretrick

Bretrick

Well-known Member
Location
Perth Western Australia
5am, laying in bed, an inch an a half long cockroach walks onto my laptop keyboard.🪳
I am not infested with Cockroaches. just want to say that.
One might visit me once in 3/4 months.
This cockie was rather lethargic, not full of energy as they usually are.
It started to try and walk up the screen, unable to. I slowly get out of bed, holding the laptop so cockie would not fall off, to the bathroom and tip it into the toilet. flushed away.
Nonchalant Bretrick triumphs again. :)
 

OH yuck... I can honestly tell you I have never seen a cockroach in the UK... thank God... but I've seen them on the continent..in Spain, Cyprus Greece, Italy .. *ugh*... disgusting.. In One place we rented in Spain while we were house hunting.. it had flying cockroaches as big as hummingbirds.. :sick::sick:
 

Bretrick said:
5am, laying in bed, an inch an a half long cockroach walks onto my laptop keyboard.🪳
I am not infested with Cockroaches. just want to say that.
One might visit me once in 3/4 months.
This cockie was rather lethargic, not full of energy as they usually are.
It started to try and walk up the screen, unable to. I slowly get out of bed, holding the laptop so cockie would not fall off, to the bathroom and tip it into the toilet. flushed away.
Nonchalant Bretrick triumphs again. :)
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That sounds like a Water Bug... different than the German Cockroach that causes infestations. We get them here when it rains a lot. I tried to feed one to my turtle and she wanted nothing to do with it. I just flush em.
 
Yes, the disgustingly large, fast waterbug. I have only encountered one this year in the house. It took me a while to run the laps around the house and dispatch him with a heavy shoe. I am not afraid of them but I don't like to have them in my home. They will drive you bonkers, they dart in and out, move about the house, taunting, teasing, catch me if you can. I just can't sleep until I get to scream"Gotcha" and smash that thing with all my strength!!
 
I can't stand flies, bluebottles or wasps so, if they come in and I can't shoo them out the windows, I use a spray. With spiders I try to catch them and release them outside but if they are the tiny money spiders, I ignore them. I have never seen a cockroach!
 
When seeing cockroaches (haven't for several years, thank goodness) DH spreads a thin layer of powdered boric acid along the edges of the kitchen, bathroom or garage walls, depending on where they were spotted. It's completely harmless to pets, humans, paint and flooring, but the roaches disappear like magic.

Except for black widows, I leave spiders to their work when I spot them inside. Crickets are adorable - when I see them inside I catch them and put them in the garden.

Pantry moths are a pain in the neck to get rid of - so hard to find their source.

Mice or rats who find their way into my house or garage have two choices: find their way back out tout de suite and forget my address, or suffer the direst of consequences.
 
RadishRose said:
I didn't know they could fly!
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Neither did I...not that I'd ever seen a Cockroach before then, but the little I'd heard about them I didn't know, so when one evening we were sitting with the porch door open and these things flew in, at first I thought they were bats.. ! O/H had seen them before somewhere so he knew immediately what they were.. Revolting, and they will not be killed.. it takes ages to actually get them to die!!
 
Trish said:
I can't stand flies, bluebottles or wasps so, if they come in and I can't shoo them out the windows, I use a spray. With spiders I try to catch them and release them outside but if they are the tiny money spiders, I ignore them. I have never seen a cockroach!
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exactly Trish.. we just don't have Cockroaches in the Uk where people live generally... .. Altho' I travel a lot it is one of the things I hate about going to hot countries.. the cockroach infestation..

In Malaga city one day.. I was walking up a lane where there was lots of cafes.. and restaurants.. and there was Cockroaches running in and out of the restaurant on the path, under people's table .. this was before we decided to sit down..which we didn't.. because I'm shouting to the waiters ..''mira todas las cucarachas''.... look at all the cockroaches.. and they just shrugged and said , no es problema

I was horrified, that they weren't even taking it seriously.. and this was a really nice restaurant too..
 
Bretrick said:
5am, laying in bed, an inch an a half long cockroach walks onto my laptop keyboard.🪳
I am not infested with Cockroaches. just want to say that.
One might visit me once in 3/4 months.
This cockie was rather lethargic, not full of energy as they usually are.
It started to try and walk up the screen, unable to. I slowly get out of bed, holding the laptop so cockie would not fall off, to the bathroom and tip it into the toilet. flushed away.
Nonchalant Bretrick triumphs again. :)
Click to expand...
Maybe a story can be developed from this. Bretrick triumphs over a fierce predator
 
My most memorable cockroach adventure happened when I was about 12 years old. We were SCUBA diving in the Gulf of Mexico. I had one of those old two hosed single stage regulators, the kind Mike Nelson used on Sea Hunt. At about 50 feet a big cockroach crawled out of the mouthpiece and into my mouth. I almost drowned!!

From then on I wrapped the mouth piece between uses and washed it just before going in...
 
When I was about 15, (so this probably goes back some 85+ years or so), an 'older' guy who'd worked the coastal freighters off Britain said that he went into the galley one night, (he was on watch), switched on the lights.......and the walls were pulsating....roaches by the gazillion!
 
hollydolly said:
exactly Trish.. we just don't have Cockroaches in the Uk where people live generally... .. Altho' I travel a lot it is one of the things I hate about going to hot countries.. the cockroach infestation..

In Malaga city one day.. I was walking up a lane where there was lots of cafes.. and restaurants.. and there was Cockroaches running in and out of the restaurant on the path, under people's table .. this was before we decided to sit down..which we didn't.. because I'm shouting to the waiters ..''mira todas las cucarachas''.... look at all the cockroaches.. and they just shrugged and said , no es problema

I was horrified, that they weren't even taking it seriously.. and this was a really nice restaurant too..
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When in Hawaii many years ago, I visited a friend's home and was aghast by a couple of cockroaches skittering near the kitchen trash. She followed my eyes, shrugged, laughed a bit and told me cockroaches were part of the price one paid when living where it's warm and rainy year round. Mosquitoes were another. Lots of creepy crawlies in the tropics.

Since it doesn't rain year-round in So Cal, we don't have nearly the bug problems that Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and other wet, warm states deal with.

Roaches can't survive below freezing temperatures. NYC and other northern cities with high rises have terrible cockroach problems because the buildings are heated. If one apartment has roaches, pretty soon the whole building has 'em.

I never saw a roach when I lived in the northeast because I lived in single family houses far enough from the neighbors that roaches couldn't have survived the outdoor crossings.
 
Creepy crawly things rarely enter my home, only an occasional fly or spider. Flies I hit with a swatter, and the spiders either find their way outside or I kill them, but I don't mind spiders at all if they stay outside. Also, an occasional earwig has come in years ago I recall.
Nah, nothing much creeps me out.
 
Nemo2 said:
he went into the galley one night, (he was on watch), switched on the lights.......and the walls were pulsating....roaches by the gazillion!
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Before insecticide or air conditioning that was the way many homes along the Gulf (of Mexico) coast were. I remember having to wait after turning on the kitchen light for the roaches to clear... And after opening a drawer in the kitchen I thought nothing of just waiting for the roaches to go before picking up a fork or spoon.

DDT was sure a blessing...
 
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Bretrick said:
5am, laying in bed, an inch an a half long cockroach walks onto my laptop keyboard.🪳
I am not infested with Cockroaches. just want to say that.
One might visit me once in 3/4 months.
This cockie was rather lethargic, not full of energy as they usually are.
It started to try and walk up the screen, unable to. I slowly get out of bed, holding the laptop so cockie would not fall off, to the bathroom and tip it into the toilet. flushed away.
Nonchalant Bretrick triumphs again. :)
Click to expand...
Pretty calm guy, eh? I like that.(y)
 
~55 years ago, on the Tunisian Island of Djerba, (the purported Ulyssean 'Land of the Lotus Eaters'), I encountered a large roach in our beachfront hotel room........I was the quickest of the two, and stomped on it before it could scurry off.

Went into the bathroom, and when I came back the damn thing was trying to get to its feet.....looked like it was attempting a six-armed pushup.
 

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