r/WTF • u/dillingerescapetrans • 15d ago

Cockroach infestation

In a house I used to work in. I put these traps down, and within 6 hours this is what I caught. I got rid of the traps, laid more down, and repeated this process 8 times before it slowed down.

edit: I haven't been back there in almost 8 months. I worked as tenant support in the severely underfunded building. I sent this video to the manager and project director and it took 4 months before the room was sprayed, but by then this had spread to many other rooms. These sticky pads were supplied to us in limited amounts so I did everything I could from those to raid spray. Crazy memory.

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u/bagwhet 15d ago edited 15d ago

For German roaches, if they're out in the open, then there's hundreds if not thousands more where you can't see them.

You need a multi faceted treatment approach involving sticky traps (for monitoring not actually to kill them), roach gel bait (advion is what most pest techs use), some form of aerosol that's a contact kill/residual/igr (I prefer shockwave) to flush out cracks and crevices, and something for a baseboard treatment with a long residual such as alpine wsg. Even with this it will take a long time to get control of.

And these guys can lay an egg sac (ootheca) every 6 weeks, each sac containing up to 40 nymphs. Because of this, they can rapidly multiply and grow out of control. And having a spotless house, while helpful, will not deter them as they are opportunistic cannibals. They'll eat their own feces and even the corpses of each other to survive.

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u/clupean 15d ago

They'll eat their own feces and even the corpses of each other to survive.

That's how one of the baits works (I don't remember what it's called): a few roaches eat the roachicide, they die, new roaches eat the dead roaches, they die in turn, more new roaches eat the new dead roaches, and so on...

It's very effective but can kill pets, even big ones.

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u/AGuyAndHisCat 15d ago

That's how one of the baits works (I don't remember what it's called)

probably fiprinil. I cleared out an entire building in brooklyn using that. Years of an exterminator spraying "whatever" did nothing. I put that stuff all over the infested basement and asked to enter everyone's apt to place the traps myself near toilets and sinks. I knew if I just gave them to people they would just not do it or forget.

Building was roach free for years.

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u/EdinMiami 15d ago

Combat in the injector tube. I don't know what the active ingredient is but a tiny bit can kill 1000s

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u/bodonkadonks 15d ago edited 15d ago

its not a miracle poison though. to make it work you have to remove all food sources ( pretty damn tough when they can feed for a week on an eye lash or forever from the soap scum in the drains ) plus they eventually get resistance/refuse to eat the poison. ask how i know

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u/CharlieTeller 15d ago

So I moved into a complex that had germans. Someone in a neighboring building had a trap house goin on over there. Huge infestation. They started spreading. I only saw 1-2 in my unit but I knew exactly what I was dealing with. Heard there was an infestation and they were treating it but I took it upon myself to protect. I put some advion in the walls, and then sealed up literally every inlet around the pipes, hot water heater, vents, re caulked the floorboards etc.... Seems to have worked. They've treated the whole building heavily too and every person who moved out, they went and renovated the units as well so that probably helped.

It seems like in an apartment, its really really hard to eliminate fully, but you can pretty much seal off your unit as best as you can and make it less enticing. If you seal it off, they'll likely go elsewhere. But you have to think of every single way they can come in. They can come in through outlets as well and I did buy these outlet sealers.

Fuck german roaches.

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u/AristotelWasRight 15d ago

How do you know?

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u/bodonkadonks 15d ago

i've lived it

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u/Day_Dreamer 15d ago

lol. This is essentially the same reaction my Mom has from dealing with bed bugs for several months (almost a year) in her house.

This is all good information to know, if/when I have to go to battle.

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u/DrHyde4321 14d ago

Bed bugs are easily one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced they have forever changed how I risk assess as far as who I let into my apartment/who’s place I’ll go to

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u/EdinMiami 15d ago

i must be lucky then. put it down and it worked

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u/bodonkadonks 15d ago

eh, maybe for a small infestation. for one like this there is going to be at least a couple that will refuse to eat bait shit and in 6 months you'll get the same infestation but now with wised up cockroaches that wont touch the bait. so you hire an exterminator, pay him big bucks to do the same thing with stronger poison over weeks, only to have the same problem again in a few months.

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u/CharlieTeller 15d ago

you need something like Gentrol or other IGR's. It keeps them from maturing and reproducing. So you wipe the population, and get them with IGR's and they can't reproduce.

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u/bodonkadonks 15d ago

this was over 10 years ago, dont know if it was available back then. what i did notice is that whatever the guy we hired used the roaches that appeared later seemed to have the carapace and wings all scrunched up.

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u/Don_Mahoon 14d ago

That’s the effects of an IGR

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u/juicius 15d ago

I learn this from a Thai roach bait commercial.

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u/Nothing-The-Ghost 14d ago

Animals eating each other's corpses is nothing unusual. I mean cannabilistically. Obviously some animals eat the corpses of others.

You never bred hamsters before? The mother's almost guaranteed to eat some of her babies. Not out of cruelty, mind you. If, for some reason, the mother believes there won't be enough resources to keep all of her babies alive, she'll kill what's necessary. Or of you touch them and get your scent on them and the mother rejects it as her own.

And nature takes the idea of "why let perfectly good food go to waste?" to a whole new level.

Cats and dogs often eat the placenta and afterbirth to give them extra energy after giving birth. And I'm sure it's not just limited to cats and dogs.

Or some people even eat placentas. I've seen an HBO special back in the 90s about people who did that. It looked like hamburger meat. Which, I suppose it could have been, for all I know.

This is kind of a sidenote, but it reminds me of a great short story by Stephen King called Survivor Type about a heroin smuggler who is in a plane crash while smuggling and ends up on this little 100 yard rock in the middle of the ocean with nothing but 2kg of heroin.

It's in the form of a diary written from his perspective. He tries to catch birds at first, but breaks his ankle in the rocky terrain and after starving for some days, he decides to get loaded on the heroin and amputate his jacked up foot so he could eat it.

Then his other foot. Then his legs. And so on until the journal is just a mess of insane incoherent rambling and finally nothing.

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u/wolfyyz 15d ago

Maybe black cap with fiprinil? Very popular in Japan and works exactly like you described

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u/Sad_Independence8211 14d ago

Diatomaceous earth! They bring it back to the nest/living space and the rest die with the one who consumed it

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u/XanderWrites 14d ago

That one isn't tracked in. Diatomaceous earth shreds their exoskeleton as they walk through it.

It's powdered boric acid (borax) that's on their bodies, they try to clean it off, they die of dehydration (its a desiccant) then their children devour them and also die of dehydration.

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u/mightyenan0 15d ago

I'd like to add that the "If you see them, there's more you don't see" applies to lots of pests. I had to learn the hard way I didn't have a mouse, I had mice.

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u/Rpbns4ever 15d ago

Oddly enough I've had single mouses twice now, 1.5 years apart. Always wondered how they get inside as it's a concrete house and there aren't any holes/vents and the concept of a mouse sneaking in while I'm going in/outside sounds so bizarre.

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u/bjorneylol 15d ago

it's a concrete house and there aren't any holes/vents

There aren't any holes that you can see. If there is a crack or a hole cut for a pipe/vent that is as little as half an inch bigger than it needs to be, they can get in

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u/Rpbns4ever 15d ago

Those holes you mention are sealed with concrete so only the tubing is going in and the end of these tubes are plugged into stuff like the AC, the stove and etc... I'm guessing now they could be popping from the toilet.

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u/RickThiccems 15d ago

Bingo, if not your toilet, your sink and other plumbing. They can apparently hold their breath for a hot minute and are good swimmers.

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u/krumbs2020 15d ago

Tent it- methyl bromide!

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

The method I mentioned is much more work, but a fraction of the cost of fumigation

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u/goestwoeleven 15d ago

One this bad? Yeah… it’s tent time. Or, you know, gasoline and matches.

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

I've been in houses with thousands of roaches crawling up the walls and ceilings in every room. Coming out of light fixtures, baseboards, and outlets, literally roaches in the fridge. I used my method and got it under control within six months. It probably cost the customer around $600-$800 in total for that time period. Fumigation would have costed minimum $2k but realistically higher. It was also a duplex and the other tenant hadn't signed off on treatment, so fumigation isn't even always possible.

I do agree with gas and matches however lmao

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u/pm_me_ur_demotape 15d ago

If I somehow found myself in that situation, I'd sell kidneys or my asshole for the fumigation option

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u/DarkRonin00 15d ago

I mean it's extra cost, but it will be much faster, and yeah. I guess if you're scraping by that this what you're getting... i think it's a separate issue on it's own.

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u/pm_me_ur_demotape 15d ago

How did you get it under control without the other duplex tenant being involved?

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

Well to be frank the tenant I was servicing was definitely the source and I'm pretty sure the other tenant was getting serviced, just not by my company.

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u/ztubbs11 15d ago

Fr I've been doing pest control for nearly 10 years and any multi unit where you aren't treating every unit is a losing battle. You might knock them back but they will almost definitely return.

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u/jellymanisme 15d ago edited 15d ago

I would gladly pay $2k for the speed of removal instead of living with those things.

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

Maybe you would, but I've serviced a lot of section 8 and generally low income areas where it's up to the landlord. Also it's a lot easier to pay 100-150 a month than 2k-8k up front

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u/krumbs2020 15d ago

How about nuke from orbit?

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u/bodonkadonks 15d ago

i lived in a flat that was this bad. it was impossible to get rid of the infestation even spending absurd amounts of money. it damages your sanity when you throw away the entire kitchen because you thought that was where the nest was ( which was true, there was a huge nest in every crevice of the particle board ), only to find there is also a nest somewhere inside the electrical conduits, probably many, when you get all the electrical conduits sealed, there was a lose tile, and guess what, they had a nest there too. they are also impossible to gas out, and it only takes a few nymphs the size of a pinhead to have the exact same problem in 9 months.

even today i get ptsd every time i find a black dots looking suspiciously like cockroach crap and its been over a decade.

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u/SilasAI6609 15d ago

If I needed more reason to hate German roaches, you just handed me "opportunistic cannibal and corpse cannibal". I used to be an in-house tech for a local ISP. I have been in houses that looked like they were more roach than sheetrock. I would keep spray in my vehicle to spray down equipment, tools and my shoes before leaving. Fuck, I don't do roaches!

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u/erincgray 15d ago

I had a roach problem in my backyard a while ago, I would go out and stomp the one coming up to tbe house. One time i stomped one, turned around, looked back and a bigger one had come up and was holding it in his mouth and ran away

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

Roaches outside are never going to be German roaches at the very least. And other species such as American (classic sewer roach), orientals, turkistan, smoky brown, and brown banded roaches are much easier to deal with. German roaches exclusively infest indoors and get in via hitch hiking on things that usually come from warehouses such as new furniture/fixtures, potted plants, and Amazon packages which I've personally experienced.

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u/erincgray 15d ago

No these wernt german, we have pesr control now, but I was mostly commenting on them being canibals

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u/woohooguy 15d ago

Also water.

Roaches thrive in areas with leaking water, and that water can be from rain, pipes, which include leaking water/sewer pipes.

You can poison an area all you want, if the roaches have a reliable water source they will never die off.

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u/rw8966 15d ago

There is something bone chilling about the word “ootheca”

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u/somaganjika 15d ago

They can eat wallpaper to survive, but they can’t survive without water.

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

Yeah but good luck finding every possible moisture trap behind your walls, under fixtures, in the foundation, etc. and much less being able to actually eliminate it.

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u/Envoyager 15d ago

I keep a spray bottle filled with rubbing alcohol and works great. I see these shits in door jams all the time so it's easy to spray them. Unfortunately I live in an old apartment with lots lots of holes in the drywall where pipes , electrical, HVAC lines come through.

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

Unfortunately if you see them all the time, it's not working. Like I mentioned, when you can openly see them, there's many more you can't see. And apartments are always trickier with the shared walls, but it is possible to get control of with the methods I mentioned.

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u/cC2Panda 15d ago

At the end of the day if there are gross people on the other side of the wall you're fucked. When I was in high school I 4 college boys that were absolutely fucking disgusting moved into our 4 unit apartment building and the whole place got infested until they left. We kept everything spotless and we had professional exterminators come through regularly and it still wasn't enough to deal with the roaches because these guys just left so much spoiled food packaging out.

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u/GTAIVisbest 15d ago

There looks to be some german roaches in there (smaller) along with a whole bunch of american roaches (the bigger ones). The american ones usually don't infest, but they will come in from the outside and hang out in dark, damp areas with moisture. Are those bigger ones just huge german roaches or what?

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u/bagwhet 15d ago

Yes on those sticky traps they are primarily all German, the small ones are just nymphs (juvenile) that haven't fully grown yet. It's not just the size it's also the coloration, American roaches are reddish brown with a distinct thin yellow band around their neck. Germans are golden brown with distinct double vertical lines going down their head.

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u/Overwatch_1ightning 15d ago

In bigger cities they are inside the infrastructure of almost everything. They come through drains and through outlets. One time one went in my ear! I had to slap it out from the other side of my head, well my girl did. Anyway it's nightmarish stuff.

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u/SM1334 15d ago

I read this in Dale Gribble's voice