Are there any major differences between an all-black one and the type that is light brown and has dark brown streaks on the back?
All but number 5.
Cockroaches get eventually everywhere, even up to the 11th floor or higher.
You forgot another option: taking the elevator. 
They are born there.
Get a cat. Cats in Taiwan love to eat cockroaches.
Really?
Get some Geckos…same reason and not as smelly.
I keep an empty tin can around and trap them. I then leave them to their own good graces. They usually die after 2 or 3 days, but I had one live for 3 weeks.
I actually trapped 2 in one can the other day. They were both dead the next morning.
Why do you think people domesticated cats in the first place?
They’re not just furry little layabouts to stroke and pet. Sometimes cats actually do have a practical purpose.
Get a gecko? Geckos came with my place. I see them often on the walls and ceiling and hear their call. Fortunately, I’ve explained to my wife that they eat mosquitos, so she too appreciates them. I can’t imagine them eating cockroaches though – do they really?
Mod Lang, does your cat lick your face after she’s eaten cockroaches?
In our apartment one of their major points of entry for cockroaches is the drains in the bathroom, or so I believe because the bathroom is one of the most likely places we find them.
My wife has me go in with a flip-flop and smack them. I had a student once who was a devout buddhist and she told me she and her husband would throw their cockroaches out the window rather than kill them.
I thought gheckos lived for ages. They really do eat cockroaches. I saw one while waiting outside a 7-11. It wasn’t very big but it ran down the 7-11 window to catch a strolling cockroach which was about 4 times wider than the ghecko. I don’t know how it swallowed it.
And it’s true, gheckos really do keep the mosquito population down. They can come round my place for tea anytime.
Geckos, or rather the common house lizards, shit around anywhere. Well, better than a cockroach crawling into your bed …
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]I had a student once who was a devout buddhist and she told me she and her husband would throw their cockroaches out the window rather than kill them.[/quote]I’ll probably get stick for this but that’s what I try to do as well. It’s not that difficult to catch them with a bowl and a piece of stiff card, then put them out the door or window.
Of course if there was a big infestation of them I’d have to think again, but for the odd one this works fine.
My cat kills them but doesn’t eat them (like all the other bugs, flies etc she catches). And she’ll only kill them when I’m not home. As soon as I’m in the same room, she obviously feels that I am the one who’s responsible for getting rid of the roaches. I caught her the other day sitting under the table and watching one of those monsters walk across our living room :s
Iris
[quote=“joesax”][quote=“Mother Theresa”]I had a student once who was a devout buddhist and she told me she and her husband would throw their cockroaches out the window rather than kill them.[/quote]I’ll probably get stick for this but that’s what I try to do as well. It’s not that difficult to catch them with a bowl and a piece of stiff card, then put them out the door or window.
Of course if there was a big infestation of them I’d have to think again, but for the odd one this works fine.[/quote]
Plus, that way you don’t have to clean the cockroach guts off the bottom of your flip-flop. It takes a knack to smack them just hard enough to kill them but not enough to make a disgusting splat.
Here’s one we had in East Vancouver, where we smoked the roaches…hehehe, but seriosly folks…If you can find their entry/exit point, spread a generous helping of lye across their path. The lye sticks to their little feetsies and when they truck on back to the nests and subsequently walk all over each other, they spread the lye all over their buddies backs. Attrition baby.
Necro - Cockroaches
[Verse One: Necro]
Cockroaches
Billions greeting, roaming around since Genesis
Coming out through the crevices
Infested, walls filled with termites
Busting through drool, looking for food
Coming out when there’s no light!
They’re small, but they make, humans nervous
You’ll do a spastic jerk, if you spot one crawling on your epidermis
If you squeamish, you’re save provided,
When you sleep you keep your mouth closed, cause yo they might crawl up inside
it
Uninvited, from out the Earth’s core
Bugs are the only species that will probably survive a nuclear war
And as you snore, they like to run to your door
Then explore, you won’t notice when they’re on your upside down floor
Schemin’, he sees food it causes poison
but some ain’t smart enough to eraid the exterminator’s poison
So the pest takes it back to his nest
contacting with another infected begins to infect the rest
A lot die, but it’s only a small fraction - we can’t catch ‘em
because there’s always new eggs hatchin’
[Chorus One:]
COCKROACHES!
Cut and scratched by the DJ
Cockroach (3X)
[Verse Two: Necro]
Cockroaches, many perceive as evil
But if you’re from The Projects, them niggas are like people!
They sleep with you, eat with you, listen to beats with you
Thousands hiding in your couch form armies to reproduce
They conceive they’re crew, roaches got there own army
generals, colonels, lieutenant, invading tenants
Your crib becomes a big roach motel, for all sorts of bugs
Poor homes for that can’t afford ?? free cockroach ?drugs?
From out the cupboard, crawling into crisis
I got baby roaches inside my food cartons camouflaged as spices
Once by accident, I ate 'em with my rice kid
Cause, when you’re hungry you don’t think twice kid
Yo there ain’t a person on earth that never ate an insect,
Cause every food warehouse in the US they infect
I used to give roaches funeral pyres, wrap 'em up -
in toilet paper, still alive and light em on fire!
So watch out, they’ll come to get you, they’re malicious
No crew parties, up in your sink, swimming up to your dishes
[Chorus Two]
Cut and scratched by the DJ
Cockroach (2X)
Whispered in the background
Cockroaches…
Cockroaches…
Cockroaches…
Cockroaches…
[quote=“Rascal”]Cockroaches get eventually everywhere, even up to the 11th floor or higher.
You forgot another option: taking the elevator. [/quote]
I’ve seen that happen in one of my former apartments. Now that I don’t have an elevator, they have to take the stairs. And no, I’m not kidding.
I was getting ready to walk into my apartment with a big heavy bag of laundry and saw two roaches sitting next to my door handle. I walked half a block to the closest convenience store, bought some bug spray and came back (still lugging the bag on my neck) and sprayed them. Then three more ran out so I sprayed them. Then a few more ran up the wall to get away from that spraying, going up to the second floor where my apartment was. And so on. Half an hour later, I had given up on spraying them to death. My numbers, counting the ones who ran or flew upstairs or away were over 20…the smallest one over an inch long. I have also watched them come in through the track where my bedroom window slides open. After one did it and two more seemed to be following in the same manner, I packed a bag and headed to a motel for the night, hoping the cat would take care of them. I am so glad to be back in a country where you have to be real nasty to get ones that big in your house rather than in a place where everyone has them, no matter how clean you are.
I can’t wait until winter comes.
I think the brown one can fly… the black one can’t
I’ve learned that Off! Mosquito Spray is quite potent and can kill a cockroach… though I figured killing it with a slipper (one that is preferably not yours) and then quickly taking it to flush down the toilet is the best bet. (I would never let one of those things stay in my trash can… even if it was dead… toilet toilet fluuusshhh)
Even dogs like cockroaches… my grandma’s dog would love to put a paw on top of one and then lift up the paw and then th cockroach would move… and then the dog would chase after it and put its paw on it again…
At least cockroaches aren’t as scary as the common house centipede (that I see all the time in the states, how creepy).
AFAIK only female cockroaches can fly.
All the better reason to hose her down with the entire contents of a can of Raid once she goes airborne… I can’t stand the ones with the “eye” on their backs.
I can vouch for the ‘cats eat cockroaches’ thing. We used to live on the second floor behind a bunch of restaurants, so we had plenty of critters around. My cat once ate 4 in one night. He could hear them even from a room away with the door closed and go absolutely bonkers when he heard one. He would eat everything except the head and legs. Unfortunately he also had to be dewormed twice while living there (worm larvae is spread by insects). We tried to train him by letting him catch the cockroach and then give him a snack as a reward, but he never quite got the hang of that idea. Now we’re on the fifth floor and we only see a cockroach about once a month and he hasn’t had worms since.