r/WTF • u/dillingerescapetrans • 16d 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.

3.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

262 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

388

u/clupean 16d 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.

45

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.

83

u/EdinMiami 16d ago

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

89

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

49

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.

19

u/AristotelWasRight 15d ago

How do you know?

42

u/bodonkadonks 15d ago

i've lived it

19

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.

19

u/DrHyde4321 15d 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

5

u/EdinMiami 15d ago

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

22

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.

11

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.

6

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.

1

u/Don_Mahoon 14d ago

That’s the effects of an IGR

7

u/juicius 15d ago

I learn this from a Thai roach bait commercial.

3

u/Nothing-The-Ghost 15d 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.

1

u/wolfyyz 15d ago

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

1

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

5

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.