Roach Infestation
Got A Roach Infestation?
A roach infestation implies having more than one or two scurry across the kitchen floor in the course of a month or two. A roach infestation usually means daily sightings, and usually means there is a significant problem to be solved.
Roaches are one of those critters who have survived since the time of the dinosaurs, and if you've had any experience with them, it's not hard to understand why. They can be difficult to kill (nearly impossible some will say), and to kill one when you see one you have to catch it first. While a roach can't outrun a human, though it will give you a run for your money over a short distance, it can usually scurry to a safe haven between the time you spot it and the time you've started to take some action.
Nasty Little Insects - Just seeing an occasional roach is an occasional roach too many for most people, and the thought of a roach infestation in our homes would send most of us into a blind panic. Roaches are scavengers. World class scavengers for that matter, which would seem to be a good thing. Rather than leave your house spic and span however, they create and leave behind their own filth, including roach dust, roach droppings, roach parts, and other bits and pieces they may have started to make a meal on and never finished. Roaches are also champion disease spreaders, possibly worse than the house fly, but a house fly landing on a piece of toast is something we can deal with. A roach parading across the same piece of toast is something we cannot.
Roach Bombs - So what to do? A roach infestation usually implies more roaches than a pet dog or cat can take care of, though they're usually willing to try. If you do have household pets you have to take precautions in where you can leave toxic baits or poisons. You, and your pets, can move out of the house for a couple of days and let an insect or roach bomb do its thing, but roach bombs rarely kill off every single roach, unless there were only a few to begin with, and since roaches breed faster than rabbits, using such a weapon will generally prove to be a temporary solution at best. Still, it might reduce a roach infestation to more manageable numbers, so the ideas shouldn't be discounted completely.
Deadly Roach Tracks - There are two other solutions which are probably much more effective, and far less harmless to other living things in the household, and they are roach chalk and boric acid in dust form, which are, for all practical purposes one and the same thing, though some brands of roach chalk may be made up of other ingredients. In using this method, it can be helpful to have an idea of the pathways roaches may follow as they come and go, or at least be able to locate cracks or crevices they may be exiting from. Boric acid slowly eats through a roaches shell, often killing it within a matter of hours, and if roaches are congregating in one place, one or two roaches that have walked through the powder will transfer some of it on to other roaches.
Sprays - Contact sprays, like Raid are effective too. They kill on contact but that means you have to see the roach to spray it, and roaches do most of their scurrying about at night. Some sprays leave a residual film which will remain lethal for a time. If you have a roach infestation you'll likely be using a lot of spray, which means you'd better have the windows open. Inhaling roach spray may not be as hard on you as it is on a roach, but can still make you ill.
Prevention Through Cleanliness - One additional method of dealing with a roach infestation is to prevent it from happening in the first place. That means a spic and span household. If there is no dirt, no food scraps, nothing at all that a roach can subsist on, it will look elsewhere to set up housekeeping. It may take a good deal of effort to get your house in that kind of shape. That doesn't imply that you live in filth out of habit, but simply means the house must be very, very clean. An occasional roach may happen by from time to time, but a roach infestation in a clean home is not a very usual occurrence.