You think you killed all the cockroaches in your house. You sprayed on the walls, crevices, nooks, and crannies. Their dead bodies are in the trash. But three days later, here they are again, twice as many. What just happened?
It’s likely that your “new intruders” are baby cockroaches. You may have nesting cockroaches in your home. Your insect extermination project killed the adults but spared their eggs.
To finally rid your home of this persistent pest, you need to track down their nesting place and destroy both eggs and crawling insects. You need to look for cockroach egg cases, fecal droppings, and an unusual musty odor in the parts of your house that cockroaches love. Then, destroy and capture them in true fashion, hopefully for the last time.
Signs you’ve found a cockroach nesting place
The presence of ootheca, or cockroach egg cases, cast skins, fecal droppings, and an unusual odor are signs that cockroaches are nesting close by.
How to spot these:
- An ootheca is a smooth, shiny, capsule-like shell around 5 to 10 mm long. Depending on the kind of cockroach, its color can be a lighter or darker shade of brown. One can carry between 10 to 50 eggs. You can find these stuck on your wall, hiding in crevices, even resting on clothes and fabrics.
- Cockroach feces look like dark coffee grounds, but these may also appear as black stains on your floor and wall.
- Roaches also shed off their skin as they mature. The presence of these shed skin and a weird musty odor confirms that you’ve just tapped into a cockroach-infested area.
This is where you should look first
Cockroaches live in kitchens and bathrooms. Armed with a flashlight, check out these rooms first, and the rest of your house afterward, for signs of roach egg cases, feces, and odor.
Like any pest, roaches will nest where there are sources of food and water. And by food, we mean both clean food and leftovers. They also love dark, compact, and humid places. But beware, they can also eventually nest in clean places like between folded garments in your wardrobe.
But you can begin by scouting exposed areas, like your floor, walls and ceilings. Then look underneath and around your appliances, like refrigerator, oven, stove, dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer. Inspect cabinets, refrigerator motors, and wall crevices.
Don’t neglect to peek into dark and tight areas that are often overlooked. Cockroaches can enter the house through bathroom and kitchen drains and nest there. Apply the same rule when inspecting other parts of the house.
Spare none and keep them away
Once you’ve tracked them down, it’s time to get rid of them all: flying, crawling, and unhatched roaches alike. Burn the eggs and apply your preferred insect killer or home remedy.
Then keep them away. Get regular drainage cleaning from professionals, because dirty drainage is an attractive nesting place. Even if you’re in Provo, Utah, where there are fewer pest issues, fewer now doesn’t mean none forever.
Cockroach infestation can be a pain to deal with. But if you know where and how to track them down, half the battle’s already won. The other half is maintaining a pest-free home by keeping it clean, tidy, and unattractive to pests.
