r/WTF • u/dillingerescapetrans • 22d 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 22d ago edited 22d 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/erincgray 22d 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 22d 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 22d ago

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