Roaches are common household pests of the type Blattodea. They are usually nocturnal, missing in action until the dawn of night approaches, causing them to leave their resting grounds and go searching about for food and their routine hustle.
They are usually found in damp and dark places like restaurants, beneath sinks in the kitchen, railway wagons, underground drains, godowns, dirty dishes, and storerooms. Roach are omnivorous insects. Roaches consume paper, leftovers, and sometimes the dead bodies of their species.
While some may think cockroaches to be harmless tiny insects, they may be a magnet to some diseases. Find out how to get rid of roaches in simple steps.
Cockroach Infestation
Cockroach infestation is the congregation of one or more roaches in a small place and leaving behind the unwanted bacteria they collected. Infestation can pave the way for certain diseases and are generally unclean. Uncover some facts and simple steps on how to get rid of roaches.
Fun Facts About Roaches
1. Survival Without Heads
This may come off as shocking, but cockroaches can survive without their heads for a week. They die because of their inability to drink the water due to the cutting of the head. They breathe through the air holes on the fragments of their body.
2. Cursorial Legs
Roaches have cursorial legs, which lets them run fast. But makes them a bad flier. Roaches can only fly short distances but can run fast.
3. Ancient
Roaches are old, even older than some dinosaurs. The origin of cockroaches was over three hundred years ago in the great land of Pangaea, and even now, their fossils are found.
4. German Cockroaches
German cockroaches are a common species of roaches. These cockroaches can grow into adult roaches in 36 days. They grow into adult roaches in as little as thirty-six days.
5. Survival Skills
The survival skills of cockroaches are commendable. They can adapt to any climate condition, eat anything they want. They can turn cannibal and even eat the corpse of another roach. They can survive even with their heads cut off.
6. Hold Their Breath for As Long as Forty Minutes
Cockroaches can hold their breath for as long as forty minutes, even when left underwater. They breathe through the holes on their body called spiracles. This also adds another point to the survival skills of the roaches.
7. They Are Attracted to Sugary Foods
Roaches love and are also attracted to sugary foods like honey, sugar, alcohol, and liquor because of their sugar content.
8. Kept as Pets
This point may come off as surprising, but yes! Some people do keep them as pets, as horrifying as that sounds.
Before learning how to get rid of roaches, one should know the consequences of not getting rid of cockroaches. Cockroaches cause many health problems, and Cockroach infestation can be hazardous for your house.
Roach Problem
They act as intermediaries and carry bacteria from one source to another. The bacteria may lead to some harmful diseases and cause deterioration in health, food poisoning, not just from roach infestation but also from a single roach.
And since they like to stay in damp places like the drain, they carry all of the filth to every corner of the home.
1. Typhoid Fever
Typhoid Fever is an enteric infection caused by the contamination of food and water sources. This fever is typical in places with poor sanitation and healthcare facilities and is very infectious.
Cockroaches carry the Salmonella bacterium (the bacteria responsible for typhoid) from one place to another, increasing the chances of the infection. The symptoms related to this fever include high temperature, nausea, diarrhea, and stomach aches. You need to get medical treatment to recover from typhoid fever.
2. Dysentery
Dysentery is an infection associated with the intestines and diarrhea related to blood. Roaches spread it with the spread of the Shigella bacteria found in contaminated drinks. The symptoms include nausea, high temperature, stomach cramps, and diarrhea with blood.
3. Cholera
Cholera was prevalent in the 19th century with the name of the cholera outbreak. It causes severe diarrhea along with dehydration. Cockroaches carry the bacterium related to cholera and spread it around in feces, vomit, and contaminated food. The symptoms include dehydration, pain in the abdomen, nausea, lethargy, and diarrhea.
4. Hansen’s Disease
Hansen’s disease, also called Leprosy, is a chronic, infectious disease focusing on parts like skin, eyes, and nerves as their root target. Roaches spread the bacteria Mycobacterium Leprae, responsible for this disease, by means of their feces. The symptoms of Leprosy are weight loss, high temperature, blisters, ulcers, and loss of color.
5. Plague
A plague is caused by intermediaries spreading the bacteria responsible for the plague to mammals. The bacteria responsible for the plague is Yersinia Pestis. The symptoms of the Plague are weakness, high temperature, bleeding from the mouth, and blackening of the tissue in your hands.
There are many more problems and diseases that roaches can cause. Therefore it is important to learn how to get rid of roaches.
Kinds Of Cockroaches
The roaches have 4500 species that are known to humans. Some of them are listed down here for your best understanding:
1. German Cockroach
German cockroaches are probably the most common cockroaches from all around the world. Their biological name is Blattella Germanica, and is about 1.5 centimeters long. This 1.5-centimeter German cockroach is dark brown, with wings it barely uses. They prefer warm and moist places with easy access to food sources. They have a musty smell to them.
2. American Cockroach
American cockroaches are another most common cockroaches around the world. Their biological name is Periplaneta Americana, and they belong to the family Blattodea. They are also called water bugs, even though they are not aquatic and can not swim.
These cockroaches are around three inches long with mahogany brown wings. The area near their heads has a yellow band. The brown wings attached helps them to fly. They prefer dark areas like bathrooms, kitchens at night.
3. Brown Banded Cockroaches
These are small house cockroaches, about 12 millimeters long. Their biological name is Supella Longipalpa. They are brown with two wings and bands along with them. They are scavengers, which allows them to eat anything inedible to humans like glue, cement, leather, and paste.
4. Palmetto Bugs
Palmetto Bugs, also known as the Florida Woods Cockroach, are large cockroaches. Their biological name is Eurycotis Floridana. They are usually mahogany brown and include various species of roaches like American cockroaches and Smokybrown cockroaches. Now that you know about the types, here lies some ways to get rid of roaches.
How To Get Rid Of Roaches
While killing roaches can be a difficult task, here are specific methods to get rid of roaches and protect you and your loved ones from the long-term effects of roach infestation. Learn how to get rid of roaches instantly with these simple steps.
1. Boric Acid
Boric acid is a weak, naturally occurring pesticide, with boron being the main show of the movie. It can be used as an antiseptic and preservative. It’s manufactured in many forms like gels, powder, and dust forms. It also contains poison, making it suitable for external use only. For this boric acid to work, you need to track the roach movements and use it accordingly.
The boric acid works with most cockroaches but may not work on the cockroach eggs since they are hidden in dark places. How boric acid works is that the pesticide sticks up on the roach’s body, reaching their internal organs, interfering with their digestion, and ultimately killing the other roaches at the end.
Apart from working as a pesticide, it also helps with smelly feet, ear infections, and tough stains on clothes. A light dusting of the boric acid can help with getting rid of cockroaches.
2. Roach Baits
Roach baits is another effective pest control method for getting rid of cockroaches. It focuses on the cannibalistic and survival skills of cockroaches, converting their strengths to weaknesses. The chemical baits lure the roaches from their hiding rooms and indigests them with the poison, ending the lifespan of these creatures.
And since they also eat the dead bodies of other roaches, you won’t have to worry about roach infestation. These baits can be placed over several different places depending upon the tracking down of these pests. You can buy roach baits from home improvement stores and also online for cheap rates.
3. Glue Strips And Sticky Traps
Glue strips and glue traps are cheap and effective roach control methods. They don’t need correct and stringent positioning like the roach baits and are reliable and easy to use. They generally strip or traps with a glue adhesive covering the inside of the roach traps and strips some poison to kill cockroaches.
Glue traps wait for the roaches to enter through the possible entry pons and trap them with the help of the glue. Glue Strips need to be replaced every other week for it to work.
4. Set Bait Stations
Bait Stations are tubes with toxic substances inside them and are ready to give solutions for your how to get rid of roaches problem. Bait placement and positioning are essential for bait stations.
The bait stations attract roaches to them and spread the toxic baits among others, killing them instantly after the other roaches ingest them.
5. Baking Soda
Baking soda is another effective trap for getting rid of cockroaches. You use both baking soda and sugar together for this method to work. You mix the exact quantities of both the baking soda and sugar and mix them, forming a powder and bait for the roaches.
Cockroaches are a sucker for sugary foods, and hence the sugar in the mixture attracts roaches, and the soda kills them while devouring their precious sugar. Spray this mixture on all the roaches’ hiding places, and then all you need to do is clear up the dead roaches.
6. Professional Exterminator
You can hire a professional exterminator to kill roaches if the methods mentioned above don’t work for you. You can get them for somewhere near one fifty dollars, and it is sure to work! You don’t need to deal with all the hitchhike of settings traps, baits, and whether it works or not.
7. Cleaning Up
Last but not least, cleaning up your house is an essential element for getting rid of cockroaches. Though the other points are pretty effective, they might not be enough. You may have gotten yourself free of all these dead roaches for now, but you may also have roach instigations in the future.
And in order to prevent it from happening, you need to do your cleaning on a routine basis and have a clean house. Cockroaches prefer dark, damp and moist places with food and shelter for their survival. They are usually found in bathrooms, kitchen cabinets, and underneath stoves. A thorough and routine cleaning of them helps to keep cockroaches away.
The first step is sanitizing your whole house, and it helps with roach control. Another need you need to look out for is leaky pipes, which may invite roaches due to their moisture and darkness. Roaches love stagnant water, and leaky pipes could be their perfect home destination.
Take care of the trash daily, wash dishes empty all the garbage cans. Eliminating food sources, so the roaches don’t come and start feeding is major, including pet food. Blocking the possible entry points is suggested by some experts. Clean the dirty dishes with soap and water.
Store your foods in airtight containers and make sure door frames have no gaps from outside so it won’t turn out to be an entry point for a roach. Seal cracks if there is one on the entry point.
How To Get Rid Of Roaches With Other Methods
Apart from these methods on how to get rid of roaches, you can also use liquid concentrates, diatomaceous earth powder, and many other products you can find in a store or maybe online.
While roaches may look like harmful creatures on the outside, they carry certain bacteria’s which may prove to be fatal to our immune system. Hence we need to get rid of them and following these ways. You can find many more solutions on how to get rid of roaches.
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