Roaches in South Florida

I just had two roaches scamper across the floor in my apartment here in Florida. I used Raid and killed them immediately.

Is this normal for Florida? Do people have insect problems? I have Raid and Combat Roach Killer across the apartment.

How do you control roaches here? It freaked me out.

A way of life in South Florida.

Or are they something you can't get rid of? Will they go into my refrigerator and eat my food?

I really am scared now.

this is the main reason you don't want them hanging around. They're also bad for asthetics, especially if you have people over for dinner and the critters decide to scurry across your floors. They don't bite, but it wouldn't be pleasant to have one crawling in bed with you. They're just...disgusting!

and thought you were talking about Jebbie and Cruella.

Florida gots the big bugs..I'm with you..I have ONE phobia in life...get and exterminator to come regularly.

There's lots of little lizards and stuff too.

It's the roaches that freak me out.

all the tiny baby lizards will run across the side walk right in front of you. You end up doing a weird kind of skipping dance to keep from stepping on them.

Are the snails dangerous?

I'm serious. I moved from Naples to Germantown, MD, in high school. Crickets grossed me out for a while much more than palmetto bugs.

Exterminators are much, much more popular in Florida than up north for a good reason.

will they come into my refrigerator and eat my food?

How do I protect my stuff?

Other than they carry germs. You will learn that it is wise to put your food stuffs in plastic rather than leave it in the boxes. Cakes, pies, etc can be protected by placing them in your oven.

Does spraying Raid everyday help? And putting up Combat?

However, you might want to have an exterminator visit your home and spray with the good stuff. Also, keeping your food sealed will make your home less inviting for the bugs.

So is seeing a roach on the floor normal, then?

They can be conquered through persistence.

nt

just wait 'til you see the grasshoppers that grow in Florida!!! They can get as long as six inches!

I went down to southern Florida on a vacation once. I found this little out of the way spot on a lagoon that I thought was perfect. So I rent a room and go out to the store and grab a twelve pack. I get back to the place and go for a swim in the lagoon then I go to enjoy my beer and relax on the beach. Right at around sunset I was mobbed by a swarm of mosquitos. I've never experienced anything like it in my life. They were everywhere. I sprinted back to my room getting bit all the way. I was covered with mosquitos.

hardly see them in your pork and beens.

They also go well in your corn flakes.

180

nt

Our cost for ours $55 every 3 months. It is the only way, really. It is safer in the long run, too. They use proper amounts.

I will consider that if it gets worse.

If there are two, there are hundreds more. Really.
Like this one.

So I have to call her.

Oh, yuck!

the household critters in the south as we lived in South Carolina for ten years.

And you are right you gotta get ahead of them and stay there.

And Carlos, they don't taste too bad, just use a lot of sugar on the corn flakes.

Have you seen any Sidewinders yet? Scorpions? Cane Toads? Cane Rattlers?

Black Widow Spiders? Brown Recluse Spiders? Alligators?

You might not like Florida very much.

I think.

Baby Pat used to go crabbing with me. She ran the boat (Fast) from pot to pot,

What a treasure she is. Are you reading this Pattie? And I love you a whole lot!

Dad 180

Our roaches are bigger and brighter than anyone's!

so how do I get rid of them? or are they just unstoppable?

the roaches or whatever will see it and assume that he has already eaten all the food and then they will go somewhere else.

that was not necessary.

But it is funny!

180

Keep your food put away for starters. Keep your counters VERY clean and your food refrigerated. Don't even think about keeping bread etc on the counters.

nt

And I sprayed Raid everywhere.

Double up on the sugar.

180

I had no idea when I moved there. I had no idea what a roach was.

If you put those roach motels around the house it will control them. Better then that if you can hire a bug guy every few months.

Leave no food out ever. Even cereal should be kept in an air tight container or in the fridge.

I will keep everything in zip lock bags. Can you put roach motels in a refrigerator or will that contiminate food?

they might put some kind of poison in those things, like a no-pest strip.

the roaches won't go in the fridge. I don't think I ever had that problem.

The suggestion above was correct - get airtight containers made out of hard plastic or glass.

I will do that!

I'd put them around the fridge, where there's less competition from real food, as well as less of a need to remove them frequently.

One overlooked solution is to make sure your fridge has a perfect seal.

I agree wholeheartedly with the need to put food in containers in Florida. I think people who do that in most places are weird, but down there it's a necessary adaptation.

As far as mosquitos, your best bet is to (1) consider Off your new scent, (2) don't smack 'em, that just spreads the antigen deeper and wider, and (3) hope that, like people who get allergy shots, that the constant exposure leads to desensitization. That happened for me, and I could go practically anywhere with relative impunity.

Florida's a great place to live, BTW. Enjoy it.

My brother lived in Bonito Springs for a few years. He never got used to them.

We native Southerners call them what they are: roaches.



The mosquito is the state bird. :evilgrin:

Squish a palmetto bug and find out. There's a sickly-sweet smell that will linger in your nose for days.

Ugh.

When I moved into an apartment in Vegas, there were these HUGE roaches. Workers were digging up the landscape at the time and that contributed to the problem. People tried to tell me they were 'water bugs'. Water bugs, my ass. They were friggin' cockroaches. After days seeing the large critters come out in the open (and disturbing my neighbors), I decided I had to do something. I studied up on roaches (you have to be smarter than the enemy). First, it might be a good idea to seal up all your food (flour, sugar, anything that has been opened) in plastic containers--cut off the food supply. Then buy some clear caulk and seal around your base boards or any cracks you think they are using to enter your place. They can slither in a crack as thin as a dime, and live for about a week without water, and almost a month without food. If you don't have pets or toddlers, get some boric acid powder and mix it with powdered sugar (3 to 1 ratio in favor of the sugar), then sprinkle it in the cracks and crevices you think they're hiding out in--behind the stove, under the cupboards, etc. I never saw a roach again after I did all of this stuff, though it could have been because the landscapers were no longer disrupting the 'water bugs' habitats.

.. as you would family.

Giant winged roaches that love to fly into your face and hair...a bug-hater's worst nightmare.

yee hawwww!

Haven't seen the giant flying ones yet, eh?

I have probably seen about 1 roach a year (usually dead).

I am petrified of roaches, BTW, so before I moved into any apartment, I always made sure there were no roaches or that the management used pest control. With pest control, you don't see roaches.

Now, we own a condo on a canal leading to the bay and don't have pest control (it's up to us to pay for this and we don't even have to), and I haven't seen a roach in about a year (have been living in our condo for 5 years).

This whole roach-thing is way overblown. Hell, I saw more roaches when I lived in Virginia than here in Florida.

Whereabouts are you?

in regard to hiring bug sprayers - you're in an apartment, it won't be very effective. They'll just go hang out next door, or upstairs or downstairs for a while, then come back.

Your apartment complex should have bugsparyers people that come around on a regular basis, and spray ALL the aprtments. So, you don't need to hire one yourself.

All the other suggestions are good.


I read the title of this thread and LOL. Some apartment complexes do better at controlling bugs than others. I didn't know that till I moved to the second complex; and the problem pretty much went away.

So, that may be your best option, depending on how bad the problem is where you're at now. The lizards are good though - I always thought they ate the roaches (don't know for sure) they seemed to be in inverse proportion to the roaches in my not-so-scientific-estimation. The more lizards, the less roaches; the less lizards, the more roaches.

Well, actually, I think they were Asian cockroaches that came to Florida via cargo ships. These suckers apparently were huge, could fly, and were attracted to light.

No longer were roaches little things that scurried away when you flip on the light switch. Now they fly out of the cracks towards the bright things. Ick.

I also remember going to South Carolina to visit some friends, and noticed these roaches crawling on their drapes -- these weren't little things, they were about the size of a half-dollar, maybe larger. The people I was visiting paid these creatures no heed. I guess they were palmetto bugs or whatever, but to me, they're roaches. It was just a fact of life in South Carolina (at least in that part of SC).

That was enough to convince me not to move to the deep south -- even after dormitory life (with 3" long cockroaches in the dorms), I never got used to it.

Ugh, now I'm going to have horrid dreams....

They dress all wrong for Florida.

I doubt that will make you feel better...it didn't make me feel any better when one would crawl across me while I was in bed :scared:

Imagine you're living in a dorm...treat them as friends!

but they sure can dirty your house. The reason boric acid powder kills them is that they walk in it and then they groom themselves, thus ingesting the powder.

I recently moved into an older mobile home and they have lots and lots of places for roaches to hide. The place was filthy with their droppings. We cleaned the place until it was spotless and I hired a monthly exterminator. I have found 3 roaches in the last 5 months and all three were in different stages of dying. For the last 6 weeks I haven't seen even one. Got rid of the ants too. We are bug free in a trailer in Florida. It can be done.

By the way, the biggest roach I ever saw was in Atlantic City, under the boardwalk.

Mosquitos - stay away from wet, shady, grassy areas, even in the daytime. Depending on where you live, they might be bad or they might not be a problem.

Caterpillars - be careful around bushes (always a good idea cause bushes can be dangerous). Some of these critters have nasty stinging spines. There is a small one that's nasty. It looks like this:


It's called a saddleback and it is about an inch long. A brush with one of them is like someone holding a lit cigarette to your skin.

Its believed to cause long-term nervous system problems and even brain damage in healthy adults.

When I lived Florida (years ago)...I went out one night and the entire sidewalk was covered in Palmetto bugs (big roaches)...you couldn't walk without crunching one..and I tried. When they got into the house they would fly and literally knock against the wall. When it wasn't roaches, it was lizards...everywhere. This was Daytona Beach...

I used boric acid....kept the buggies at bay. I like bugs..normally..but I have a rule against roaches in the house.

I lived in South Florida most of my life. I remember at one time
I had two in my apartment that were flying and dive bombing at me. Ugh! I now live in north Georgia. We have roaches here, but none so big as in Florida.

1) They like moisture. Keep the area as dry as you can.

2) They won't go in your fridge...too cold...but they'll hang out underneath it as it will be warm and damp.(Dishwasher/washer/Dryer) Spray raid to drive them out. Once they're out of the area lightly dust Boric Acid powder under the fridge. Repeat about once every month. Sprinkle Boric Acid powder under your dishwasher and under the sink. Lay paper over the powder under the sink. Avoid adhesive backed liners, they attract roaches.

3) Wipe down counters immediately.

4) Plug potential entry spots under counters etc. with steel wool.

Good luck. Personally I can't stand the damn things but since I started using Boric Acid around my home a few years ago I can count on one hand the number of roaches I've seen inside the house...and always on they're back.

Outside is a different matter. Texas roaches/waterbugs/republican spawn are everywhere..Can't do anything about it...:-)

A lot of other people have mentioned it and I will wholeheartedly repeat it!

Boric acid sprinkled liberally behind the fridge the stove and in the dark recesses of your cupboards..Boric Acid solutions are used in eyewashes...so it is far far safer than your Raid...
Although I might still recommend keeping the Raid around for the more bold buggers..

Then every two week or so you can see how many its killed!...Clean up and Start over again.

If you saw two then there are most likely hundreds to thousands in your apartment building...I am not kidding...

The problem is that you can't control your neighbors and I lived in an apt building in college that had a very severe problem propelled forward by some digusting people who didn't clean up after themselves... after the landlord refused to do anything I moved out... but hopefully you will have better luck!

First of all, you need to learn the difference between roaches and palmetto bugs. Palmetto bugs usually find their way into your home after a week of seasonal rains. If you don't know the difference right away, you'll figure it out by their behaviour because they don't act like home boys. They just don't seem to know that they're not suppose to show up until after the lights are out. Leave out a sauce pan of spaghetti and you're likely to find them inside only two hours after dinnertime. They're really stupid that way.

I don't suggest using Raid everytime you see a bug because you'll poison yourself and your pets before the end of the year. The best thing to do is get a monthly extermination service and on a daily basis, don't leave food out for the roaches. If you live in an apartment complex, it's tough because you can't control your neighbor's hygiene habits.

The roach hotels are great! I left a box under the sofa for a month and when I went to retrieve it I found a female roach which had her egg hatch and the first babies out were used as stepping stones by the ones that followed. It's real National Geographic quality living down here in the tropics.

Look at it this way, at least their not Guinea Worms.

Carlos, put away the Raid! It sounds like you're overdoing it, and that stuff can make you really sick, over time.

Try the Boric Acid, it does work from all I've heard and seen in my own house. If not that, at least get a professional exterminator that is trained to use nasty chemicals in the safest way possible...please?

I'd be careful with a powdered sugar mix, though. You might be inviting half a dozen varieties of ants to join your roaches in their suicide dance.

We had a flea problem years ago. (The dog didn't bring them in the house - the next door neighbor did!) I mixed up a batch of magic powder using 5 parts boric acid, 3 parts diatomaceous earth, and 1 part table salt. The fleas were jumping five feet in the air to get away from the stuff! The DE ripped open their exoskeleton and the other two ingredients dried them up. Two full house applications and two vacuum cleaner bags later, there wasn't a sign of a flea. (We made the neighbor stay out on the patio. ;-))

Florida's a haven for lots of pests. There are 8-legged ones - spiders and scorpions. Six-legged ones - too numerous to mention. Four-legged ones - gators, raccoons, moles, rats. No-legged ones - snakes (the poisonous ones anyway) and slugs (you can drown them in beer). There are plenty of two-legged ones, too, but most of them work part-time in Tallahassee.

Welcome to Florida, Carlos!