Cockroaches - small unpleasant apartment residents - always cause a feeling of disgust, rejection and hostility, as their appearance provides the owner of the living space with a lot of problems. For a long time, the mustachioed insect manages to go unnoticed (since it leads a nocturnal mode of existence), lives calmly in comfortable conditions and quietly reproduces. If the mustachioed creature had the imprudence to catch the eye of the owner of the apartment, it means that a lot of insects have divorced, so they need to be urgently disposed of. Why is it not recommended for a person to calmly, so to speak, coexist like a neighbor with cockroaches?
What little cockroaches look like
A well-known proverb says: "You need to know the enemy by sight." What do small cockroaches look like? Such insects are characterized by a wide abdomen, short wings and a flat body shape. The most important organ of the body is the tactile antennae, which provide the insect with orientation in space. Three pairs of legs are equipped with suction cups and claws to help move on any surface. The high speed and agility inherent in small cockroaches cause them to penetrate into the mostnarrow gaps, moving not only in the space of the apartment, but also through basements, sewers, attics, garbage chutes.
Cockroaches are disease vectors
From walking on their chitinous covers, cockroaches bring a lot of various pathogenic bacteria, helminth eggs and spores of fungi caught in the way of their intricate route. In just a few hours, this entire set may be on the kitchen table, food and utensils. In addition, cockroaches - small pests - are omnivores and are equipped with mouthparts that can grind any food. A considerable range of pathogenic microorganisms is also present in the digestive system of cockroaches and can cause diseases such as pneumonia, meningitis, gastroenteritis, dysentery, salmonellosis, mycobacteriosis.
The danger is represented by the chitinous covers remaining after molting, the remains of dead individuals, dry excrement. Mixing with house dust, such substances get on the human skin, digestive tract, respiratory tract and can cause a number of serious diseases, including allergic rhinitis, bronchial asthma, dermatitis.
The presence of mustachioed insects can be identified by an unpleasant smell in the apartment, which most often comes from black cockroaches. This is especially noticeable with a significant accumulation of them. How to get rid of domestic cockroaches in the apartment?
About small black cockroaches
The black cockroach is a prominent representative of its compatriots, it gets into apartments mainly fromsewers, basements and garbage cans. There is an observation that this individual does not rise above the 5th floor, so it causes the greatest trouble to the residents of the lower levels. Small black cockroaches in the apartment, whose presence indicates poor sanitary conditions in the room, do not disdain any food; in its absence, they feed on leftovers from the trash can.
In terms of reproduction rate, they are superior to their red brothers, who also prefer to live next to a person.
The red cockroach (in the common people "Prussian"), characterized by an elongated body and a light red color, has chosen living quarters so firmly that getting rid of him and his brethren is a rather tedious and lengthy business.
By the way, such insects regulate the number of their numerous colonies on their own.
If small cockroaches appeared: what to do?
Effective drugs in the fight against cockroaches is the Dichlorvos aerosol, which ensures the rapid death of insects, provided that they are outside their holes at the time of treatment. The surviving individuals after the weathering of the chemical will calmly return to their previous way of life. The disadvantage of using this method is the danger of poisoning with toxic chemical vapors of pets, for whom such treatment is sometimes even fraught with death.
Small cockroaches in the bathroom, in the kitchen and in the apartment as a whole can be destroyed by gels ("Dohlox", "Liquidator","Killer", "Raptor"), sold in large syringes and ready for instant use. The product should be applied along the baseboard along the perimeter of the room with small drops at a distance of about 10 cm from each other. Literally a week later, cockroaches do not come to stay in the apartment they have lived in and leave it forever.
Cockroach Traps
Safer and more effective in the fight against cockroaches are traps (for example, Raid or "Raptor"), which are small round boxes with poison inside and several entrances.
Such devices are equipped with special Velcro, so they can be attached almost anywhere. A long period of exposure, safety, lack of fumes and harmful odors are the advantages of using such products. A trapped red cockroach becomes infected itself and infects other relatives.
Boric acid against cockroaches
You can "treat" cockroaches with the most terrible poison for them, causing a fatal outcome - boric acid. It is recommended to sprinkle such a powder on the place where there is a trash can, baseboards, sinks, ventilation openings, a bathroom, a toilet. For a person, such a drug, inexpensive in cost, is completely harmless, so you can safely sprinkle suspicious surfaces with it. It should be borne in mind that insects are very sensitive to the powder harmful to them and for the most part feel it a mile away. In this case, you can play on the specific feature of cockroaches: curiosity.
Moustached insectsvery curious. If, for example, you put a bright candy wrapper on the windowsill and watch it for a while, then a cockroach or even several will definitely appear in your field of vision, which will approach an unfamiliar object in order to study it.
Therefore, boric acid can be disguised as an attractive ball. To prepare the poison, you need to mix 30-50 grams of the drug powder with raw egg yolk (either bread crumbs or grated potatoes) until a mushy state. Then you need to stick small balls (about 1 cm in diameter) and spread them out in places where there is supposedly a massive accumulation of cockroaches. It is advisable to perform this operation at night. Small cockroaches will not feel the disguised boric acid, but they will definitely begin to explore the ball itself and, touching it with their antennae, will doom themselves to death.
Since insects do not transmit a signal of danger to their relatives, new individuals will approach the cunning bait, become infected and crawl away terminally ill. You can completely get rid of cockroaches with this method in 3-4 weeks, depending on their number. There is a possibility of reappearance of cockroaches; it may be the hatched offspring left in the eggs by the female insect. Therefore, the boric acid method is recommended to be repeated, and cockroaches - small and large - will disappear forever.
Killer composition: flour + alabaster
An effective remedy for cockroaches - red, rather unpleasant insects -a combination of alabaster and flour in equal proportions. The resulting mixture should be sprinkled on the places of the greatest accumulation of insects. Alabaster, when it enters the body, hardens, turns into gypsum, which causes the death of mustachioed individuals.
Cockroaches are small, brown and black insects that cannot stand the smell of ammonia, so washing the floor with the addition of this substance will scare them away for a while.
Beer against cockroaches
You can insidiously take advantage of the love of cockroaches for beer, which is poured in a small amount on the bottom of the can, grease the inner edges of the glass container with petroleum jelly and leave it in the place where insects are supposed to live. The next morning the bank will be filled with cockroaches. With this method, only those specimens that crawl out of their holes will die. Females laying eggs and packing them into an ootheca - a special chamber at the end of the abdomen - will remain inside and are guaranteed to ensure the appearance of new offspring instead of the destroyed one.
Choosing and scaring method
Cockroaches do not like low temperatures: at -5 oC they fall into suspended animation, at -50oC they live only 30 minutes, at -70 oС - they die in a minute. Therefore, in ancient times in the villages they were driven out by the cold, so to speak, they were chilled: in winter they did not heat the hut for two or three days, they went to spend the night with their neighbors.
In order to prevent cockroaches from entering your own territory, it is recommended to use substances that repel them. These are fresh cucumber peels or green bay leaves.
Curious facts
For those who like to kill cockroaches suddenlyway worth knowing about the extreme resistance of such insects to physical damage. Therefore, slamming him is not enough, you still need to either rub him well, or sprinkle him half-dead with boric acid and let him go to his relatives.
Curious information: thanks to a specific gene called "knockdown" by scientists, cockroaches can imitate their own death. Having smelled the poison, the insect loses consciousness, falls with its paws up and stops breathing.
After lying down for a certain period, he comes to his senses and calmly continues his wrecking activity.
Preventive measures
As a preventive measure against the spread of cockroaches in the home, it is recommended to use the following recommendations:
- Maintain perfect cleanliness in the kitchen and in the apartment as a whole. There should be no crumbs on the tables and the floor, and greasy deposits on the walls. The trash can should be taken out in a timely manner, without putting off until tomorrow.
- Spices should be stored in sealed glass containers.
- Wash the dishes and the sink on time.
- Do not leave food containers or food bags open.
- Close the air outlets with a grill or fine mesh.
- Cockroaches can live several weeks without a head, which is confirmed by repeated experiments.
- Many species can fly (common American cockroach or Lapland cockroach).
- Moustache insects may not breathewithin 40 minutes. This property contributes to the retention of water in the body when it is impossible to replenish it.
