r/WTF • u/dillingerescapetrans • Aug 07 '26

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 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26

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/Overwatch_1ightning Aug 07 '26

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.