German Roaches Found In New Home

Sadly, this can happen. Buying a home that has been vacant for some time can lead to some very hungry roaches coming out for food. Our client discovered the roaches when she began to heat the home over her first few days there. Slowly, the roaches emerged from the kitchen and the adjoining bathroom. German roaches, the dominant species in the Northeast, can be brought into a home many ways. Deficiencies in proper sanitation will hinder treatment methods, but this isn’t how they got there. In this day and age where less pesticides are being used on crop foods and in shipping from country to country, there are less inspection at the borders of those countries, and consumers can order just about anything online without really knowing EXACTLY where it’s coming from, roaches are one of the most prolific insects in the world. 

If you’re kitchen is dirty, roaches will live off the grease…Yeah, we all know that by now. 4 grams of bacon grease is enough to feed 200 roaches for 15 days..Nasty. But did you know roaches also love the taste of glue, tapes and cardboard? This is because many glues and adhesives will use small amounts of animal by -products in them and although many cardboard items are recycled from cardboard pulp; these same adhesives will be used to “bind” the new recycled pulp into new cardboard. Vicious cycle. 

Back to our client….No one found any dead roaches or indications of roaches during the inspection process before they bought them home. This is because roaches are “photo-sensitive” to light and they will hide in the tiniest cracks and crevices (known as thigmotaxis). These two facts can make it very difficult to find and treat the roaches. 

Since we know they’d be VERY hungry, we applied bait deposits in very small amounts into the inconspicuous areas throughout the kitchen and bathroom. We also spot treated with a residual material around the existing appliances (left from the previous owner but the new owner had mentioned not using them and getting rid of them ASAP). The client purchased a maintenance contract from us and here we are 3 weeks later and we have zero reports of any live roaches, but lots of dead ones. 

At Pest Assassins, we are a local family and veteran owned company offering cockroach control services in Sharon, Attleboro, Tiverton and Providence and throughout our service area in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Contact us today for a free quote.