Cockroaches

There are thousands of cockroach species and cockroaches have been around for millions of years.  They are extremely good at adapting to their surroundings and surviving.  Unfortunately, our homes and businesses are an ideal and inviting environment for several cockroach species to thrive.  Many people believe that only people with "dirty" environments get cockroach infestations.   This is simply not the case, though failure to thoroughly clean can certainly  compound the problem!  And once an infestation has begun, cleaning alone will not eradicate it.  

Cockroaches thrive in almost any home or commercial environment once they have been introduced.  They simply need food, water, and a "harborage" or hiding place to live and breed.  Warm, dark, inaccessible environments are an added bonus for the opportunistic invaders. They can often be found hiding in electronic devices and can sometimes damage those devices by shorting electrical circuits.  They can hide in the smallest of spaces and clutter is their accomplice in overtaking your home.  They will hide in inaccessible wall voids, attics, cabinets, boxes, books…..anywhere that is difficult for you to access.   

Cockroaches enter your home and business in a variety of ways.  They can enter from outside through tiny cracks and crevices, and they can enter through drains and sewer pipes. Often, we unknowingly let them hitchhike into our home or business in crevices of boxes, bags, and even on our person, because these things have been exposed to an active infestation and either picked up live cockroaches or eggs which will hatch later.   Due to their prolific breeding habits, and life cycle, just a couple of cockroaches or a viable egg sack being brought in, can quickly become a big problem throughout your home or business!

Cockroach food sources are numerous.  They will invade your pantry and  take full advantage of unsecured or spilled food and drink, and chew through packaging to feed on your groceries; They feed in garbage cans, sewers, drains, outside vegetation, etc;  they will eat glue from boxes, canned good labels, and books.   And they will consume other insects, dead skin cells, and will cannibalize their own dead.  Because they tend to forage everywhere, including disease and germ laden locations like trash cans, sewers, etc…, they can quickly spread those germs and diseases to your food and contaminate it, as well as; food preparation areas, utensils, and pots and pans.  

In severe infestations, they will crawl over you as you sleep and have been known to enter ear canals, mouths, etc…  Just a few of the bacteria they spread are: Salmonella, Shigella, E. coli, and Streptococcus.  They can spread tapeworms, pinworms, and hookworms, and they can spread viruses rapidly.  If that isn't enough, they also shed their exoskeleton several times during their lifetime and the dust from this and their droppings can cause severe asthma and allergies as well as a horrible odor in your home.

Because they have a complicated life cycle and can hide in the tiniest of cracks and crevices and in places most people would never think to look; it can be extremely difficult to break their life cycle, eradicate all adults, and  all emerging nymphs, as well as eggs waiting to be hatched.  It is usually a multi step process which your professional pest technician is very familiar with.  Most over the counter products available to the non licensed public are contact kill and only effective for short periods of time, so often you can spend hundreds of dollars and not touch the actual harborages from where the cockroaches are emerging or the unhatched eggs.