First time I came across one of these, I happened to be in one of the most vulnerable positions a person can be in, AKA - taking a piss. The damn thing climbed up onto the shelf on the other side of the bathroom, LOOKED at me - and I knew instinctively what it was going to do. Of course, being where I was - I couldn’t do a damn thing but try and duck as the god forsaken thing flew straight at my face. As to say, I pretty much fell off the toilet.
Sadistic little bastards!
Until I can find a place that allows me to keep a kitty, I keep a can of raid around.
You misunderstand. That roach was offering itself as a live sacrifice. You should have opened your mouth and taken that roach in one swallow. Sometimes you can feel them crawl around your stomach for a few seconds till your acids kill them off but all in all, a free meal.
Where do I get geckos?
Seriously, I have ALWAYS wanted them. I would find them on the hiking trails and squeal in amusement but never wanting to take one out of its habitat. So now I have an excuse.
Lili, normally I’d tell a person to man up and smack that roach. But you’re a woman, so I can’t say that…
I’d help you if I was your neighbor, but I’m not. At least I can give you some advice from my experience.
Buy some roach traps. Put them near the garbage and near cupboards with canned foods. I was cleaning out my cupboards one day when I discovered not one, not two, but three giant roaches hiding behind some canned goods. At that time I didn’t have any roach traps, but I had a Dirt Devil wet/dry vacuum cleaner that I used to suck the roaches into the compartment. But I’m guessing you don’t have one of those.
After leaving the roach traps out there for about a few days, you’ll start to see some roaches lying on their backs close to where the traps are. If you feel disgusted going near the dead roaches, get a broom and dust pan to clean up the dead roaches.
For more immediate results, get RAID. It works fast! I have two aerosol RAID canisters. One time I saw a roach and I sprayed it with some RAID at about 8" distance for about 2-3 seconds. It died instantly. But the RAID smell took a while to leave the area. I’d advise you to wear a mask if you’'re going to do that.
BTW, don’t leave coffee grounds lying around. Roaches love that stuff (and dog food).
Try not to think about that roach. Otherwise you’ll have problems going to sleep.
People eat cicadas, they’re supposed to be a lot like shrimp. I bet a farm raised roach wouldn’t be all that different. My father-in-law used to talk about barbecuing them back in the war when food was short, said they were pretty good
[quote=“Gryphon”]Lili, normally I’d tell a person to man up and smack that roach. But you’re a woman, so I can’t say that…
[/quote]
Damn straight.
More reason to go to Starbucks.
[quote]
Try not to think about that roach. Otherwise you’ll have problems going to sleep.[/quote]
I couldnt sleep the rest of the night. I’m staying home tonight, bug bombing the room tomorrow and spending the night at my co-Teacher’s apt.
Some facts most people dont know about cockroach.
Cockroach can live without food for maybe one year.
If you dont make a mess with food and crums laying about, the cockroach will eat paper instead. Or even a cardboard box.
So dont try to starve a cockroach. It wont work. You have to kill it, or get a gekko to eat it.
I heard a story about a Canadian in Ilan who just caught them from the house, kept them in a jar and munched on them alive. Apparently it smells disgusting. The image is rather gross to me, too.
A great roach trap is a big bottle of taiwan beer with bout an inch of beer left in the bottom. Roaches get in it, drink the stuff and die right in the bottle. And the other roaches cant stop themselves trying their luck as well. Pretty soon…a big bottle of taiwan beer filled at least half full with taiwan roaches.
Just dont put that bottle anywhere where you might accidentally take a swig.
Well… geckos are cute and all but… what’s gonna keep it from leaving your room or apartment? or you accidentally stepping on it or it taking refuge somewhere on your underwear… I guess they just come and go naturally. I remember I’ve only seen them a few times that I can remember growing up in Yonghe. But saw cockroaches pretty much every other day… that flew. Plus you gotta deal with the tail geckos drops when they get scared. … or the roaches will.
I’m empathically laughing…but also really I wish I hadn’t been reminded of memories of…shudder…the roaches!
My parents moved our family to Taiwan after I had just turned 4-years-old and we lived in Danshui on the hill just below what is now called Aletheia University but was then called Oxford College. One of my earliest memories is of waking up and hearing my parents whisper for me to lie very still while they removed a large venomous spider (red back) that was clinging to the inside of my mosquito net. Other similar Danshui memories include watching my mom step on centipedes and having them expand to over a foot in length and curl back up over her shoe; “helping” my dad collect tarantulas for an entomologist at the University of Arizona who had sent us these cardboard tubes to mail back in; and the late-night shrew hunts my dad orchestrated with other men in our neighborhood (they cornered them, beat them with baseball bats, and put them out of their misery by goring them with sharpened stakes of bamboo (where was PETA when these poor creatures needed them)).
Years later we moved to Taichung and lived next door to a hotel with major sewage problems. At night hundreds of cockroaches would ping against the window of the bedroom I shared with my little sister. One night I woke up with one crawling in my hair, jumped off the top bunk, and screamed for her to remove it, which she did. She still hasn’t forgiven me for that. I woke up on countless other occasions with roaches crawling on some part of my body. I remember the sheer size of these buggers and, as was mentioned by an earlier poster, the fact that they fly.
Mice, pack rats, shrews I can handle; in fact, I’ve had quite a bit of experience with them here in New Mexico (and with centipedes too which don’t have the same yuck factor as roaches). But, since I am hoping to make it back over to Taiwan in the not-too-distant future, I am very relieved to hear that it is conceivable to find a roach-free apartment there.
After moving to a new apartment, my cats wiped out about 30 of them last year. They sat there waiting for hours for them to appear and executed them followed by a feed.
I was thinking the same thing. Unless you have somehow managed to train the gecko, what’s to keep it from running away?
But if you really want to get a gecko, I’m sure you could find it in a pet store. There’s a huge pet store in Xindian at the intersection of 中央路 and 中正路. This pet store even featured a giant turtle and a swan (or maybe it was a goose…I forget) once.
There are also at least two pet stores (one is near a police station) on 汀州路三段 near the Kungkuan MRT station (near NTU).
When we were living in Pingtung we moved to a relatively new building and didn’t have roach problems there, but knew they would find their way into the building eventually. We bought some silicone sealant and went around sealing up all cracks, crevices, and even along the bottoms of the walls of the kitchen, along the insides of our kitchen cupboards, and so on. We also kept drains plugged up when not in use. In our nearly 5 years on that apartment, we only saw one roach, and we think it came out of a Costcos box we had just brought home that day. Friends in the same building started to have trouble with small roaches, but we never did. I am also a clean freak and never left dirty dishes in the sink or stuff lying around the kitchen, which I’m sure helped.
In our previous older apartment, we definitely had them, and when I was on my own I just sprayed the hell out of them with whatever kind of chemical spray I could grab first…that always worked. God I hate those things…they give me chills all over when I even think about them.
Back in the day, we bought 3 geckos to keep our iguana company. One disappeared from the box on the drive home, and the other two didn’t last an hour in the terrarium. We would see one scurry under the fridge when the kitchen lights were turned on from time to time tho. And we were cockroach free. But in Calgary.
[quote=“tsukinodeynatsu”]There are a few golden rules to keeping cockroaches out of your house:
Sweep and mop your floors at least once a week. Sweep every day, particularly the kitchen.
Clean behind everything.
Never leave any food out. ANY. After cooking wash the walls around the stove (there’ll be oil on them if you cook local food), wipe down the entire kitchen and wash up all the plates. Wipe down the table that you ate off.
Tie up garbage bags.[/quote]
Best advice in the thread. No matter where we’ve lived, keeping the place scrubbed clean is the only truly effective way to keep roaches out. They’re not interested in hanging around if there’s nothing to eat.
It’s honest advice from personal experience. I never screamed so loud or got a shoe off so fast. 
[/quote]
