I'm in Ft Worth TX and have just recently been getting what I would call 'water bugs' (dark brown, about 3/4" long, look like BIG roaches) in my kitchen and bathroom.
Do you have a favorite way of getting rid of these pests without having to call an exterminator?
TIA
Lewis.
*****3/4" and "big" don't belong in the same sentence. I've tripped over roaches walking their dogs down in Georgia.
But that being said, the traditional fix is to spread boric acid, a white powder available at any drug store, onto the places you think they'll travel: on water pipes, at the junction of the floor and cabinets, etc.
They walk through it and then take it with them back to the nest. Then they all die. Cheap, effective. And unless you've got the most inquisitive of pets, it's fairly safe. It's never bothered either my cat or my dog.
Mortimer Schnerd, RN mschnerd at carolina.rr.com
I am in FL and we have Palmetto bugs - sounds like the same thing. They are found in kitchen and bathroom. I have no idea how they get in the house but suspect they may come in under the kitchen door from the garage. I chase them around with Raid and hope I hit them ... I also get spray and spray around the outside of the house, especially around doorways. The house has central air so unless they are coming in under the door they must have found a way along water pipes but cannot figure out how.
I used to work in a pharmacy in NYC that had a damp basement. We had water bugs that were measured in inches, not fractions of inches.
I was wearing hiking boots one day and I smashed a big one with my heel. The cracking sound echoed across the basement.
When I lifted my foot the d*mn thing scurried away and crawled under a pallet. Freaked me out!
I had one travel on a suitcase from Parris Island, SC, to Indiana. Must have been a Marine recruit :o)
Sounds like German Cockroaches (sometimes called water bugs)?
Boric Acid is safe around the house.
A local here discovered that used coffee grounds in a glass jar will catch them.
Use a glass mayo jar, place two tablespoons of coffee in it and fill
1/3 with water. Tilt the jar against the wall, cabinet, etc. The roaches climb into the jar and cannot climb out, so they drown. Empty the dead one out and make a fresh batch.I was skeptical at first. I put a couple of jars outside around the house and was surprised at the dead roaches. No roaches in the house.
It works and is cheap!!
Palmetto bugs, water bugs etc are all cute names for the American Cockroach. It is a native and in the grand scheme of things the easiest to kill because we only recently started trying to so they are not immune to much. (unlike asian and european cockroaches, those nasty little ones that get in everything) Dusting out of the way places with boric acid is very effective and the best direct approach is the baits. They do come in from outside and are not usually infesting your house like the foreign kind unless you have been ignoring them for years. Sprays can work but the typical roach spray uses chemicals that are far more toxic than they need to be if you are just trying to kill the American variety because they are formulated for city bugs that have been sprayed for a couple centuries with chemicals if ever increasing toxicity. Home Depot, Lowes and Ace sell the boric acid in a quart sized plastic squeeze bottle with a pointed tip. You can shoot a dusting into the holes around pipes and into walls, up under cabinet kicks so it gets under the cabinet and in other cracks and crevices. These are the places where the bugs hide and it is away from kids and pets. If you want to kill them outside, a fairly mild chemical like Sevin will do a good job. Concentrate on mulch beds, palms, under things that lie on the ground and a perimeter up next to the house. Don't kill the reptiles like tree frogs, lizards and snakes. A fat palmetto bug is a tasty meal to them. Since these bugs are mostly nocturnal the snakes and frogs are much more effective than the lizards that sleep at night. (contrary to popular legend).
The German cockroach are the brown ones that invade the pantry and counter tops. The American cockroach is the large and often black "waterbug".
Indeed. They can't survive without plentiful water. So if you get rid of the leaks, caulk around the shower and elsewhere as needed, the bugs will disappear as the excess water goes away.
I found the link for the coffee/jar trick: Dubbed the Vegas roach trap.
With video testimonials.
Call them what they are, cockroaches. Get yourself a can of Roach Prufe. It contains a fine blue boric acid powder. Make a "duster" from a cotton ball and wire. Dust the powder around all the baseboards, threashholds, crevices, etc. Clean up your bathroom/kitchen area first.
In Germany they are French cockroaches, that is why I just said European. ;-)
" snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com" wrote in news:5efa3c13-345a- snipped-for-privacy@k1g2000yqf.googlegroups.com:
We get em in NC too. Larger than 3/4" On hot, humid nights they really come out running around the driveway like Times Square on 12/31. The steps I've done in multiple houses I've had here:
- Bomb the house with Raid ® Flea Killer Plus Fogger available at WalMart.
- Be sure door weatherstripping is good. They're attracted to light at night, cooler air and water.
- Caulk all areas where devices such as CATV & phone cables, pipes enter the house.
- Get yourself a gallon of like Ortho Home Defense. The bifenthrin and others such as Pyrethrins in these does them in even long after it dries. Once they cross it they croak afterward. Spray all interior perimeters (carpet/hard floor). Doors sills, jambs, window tracks. Spray exterior of these as well.
Seems to work for me very well. A more scientific document from the Univ of FL at
You're killing your pets with all that poison! First the Advantage/Frontline (have you even researched the side effects??). Then you bomb the house with Raid? That poison stays in your environment forever, endangering you and your pets, but they have no choice in the matter. And then, as if that weren't enough, you also spray indoors with Ortho Home Defense? Of course, you've killed everything, and not just the bugs! Your poor pets!
Is 'water bug' an euphemism for cockroach? If so, they'll be the only thing left alive.
Yes, when I lived in Philly, no one had cockroaches except in the minority areas. The rest had water bugs.
Water bugs are American cockroaches, not to be confused with the smaller Asian or German roach (the Germans call them French roaches). In Florida the American cockroaches are palmetto bugs. I am not sure about the northern versions but the southern "bug" is pretty easy to kill, compared to the ones man has fought for 1000 years. They aren't immune to much. I Maced one once in Maryland at the Giant Food warehouse when it came out of a machine I was working on. That rolled it right over. I am guessing that is not the kind of control the OP wants tho. Start with Boric acid in places your pet can't get to. It is a fairly benign poison anyway. The human fatal dose is up around an ounce.
YouTube pest traps probably weren't developed enough back then.
There is a difference between the two. Water bugs are fatter.
I wondered about them too as we had them but only in the basement where there may have been access to water.
The one I killed at the Giant looked like a "Palmetto Bug" and may have come up from Florida in a produce shipment. I only saw a few water bugs in Maryland and I just assumed it was the same thing, just darker. The Orkin site points out it is a different bug. The Asian roaches I am thinking about are darker than the German roach, about the same size (about 3/8" to maybe 7/16") but they have a wider ass and I don't think they fly. The only time I ever dealt with either of them was when I was in an apartment in Maryland and they are tough to get rid of. One sloppy neighbor and everyone gets some. I sprayed so much poison around I doubt anything could live in there. I also had SOS pads stuffed in all the wall penetrations around pipes and such. It did cut down on the invasion and I seldom saw any. I was still real careful with anything I moved into my new house, not to bring any with me.
You also need to be careful with stuff you buy. I got some German roaches in a box of rigging equipment I ordered last month from Louisiana. I sprayed the hell out of it with Bifen and put it outside. So far so good.
One of my friends owned an exterminator company and invented a flea killing process that he sold for over a million bucks. I learned a lot about bugs from him. His non compete got him into the landscape business, still killing bugs but not household bugs and fleas. I learned a lot about Latinos from that business. He had about 100 working for him, probably most illegal but they had papers.
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