Opened one of our boxes after a move abroad aanndd..

[BadLuck2023]

Found a bloody roach! It's shat all over the paper wrapping our belongings and honestly made me feel ill! (I've got a phobia of them).

I ran to grab the bug spray but now I can't find the bloody thing. Aibu to ask of ways I can convince DH to help me empty the boxes 😇

Ok, just jotting this down on my list of reasons not to visit Oz.

femfemlicipious
I am in NZ … this is the exact reason that I don’t live in Australia!

@BBno4 *The ones we get in England are insidious. You will have them multiplying over and over and they will get into the fridge, food cupboards, bedrooms They could even crawl over you in your sleep.

Its totally different*

Twaddle. We have these as well in places. Nearly everywhere I lived in inner city Sydney was infested with the small (to us) brown cockies - as opposed to the large black ones you are talking about that we also live with. I had one place where you got up in the night to go to the loo, turned on the light and the place was a seething mass of brown that disappeared in an instant. Fresh hairs out weekly and the morning after you’d be hoovering up 100ms of them. Rinse and repeat weekly. Professional pest control sprays would only give respite for around 6weeks, and yes they crawled over you in your sleep. Once infested there was nothing to do other than live with them.

I’ve only ever had such infestations outside inner city Sydney in two houses in the burbs, the rest have been free from them, just the odd one here or there occasionally, and otherwise the big black cockies we all live with all the time.

How hard is it to understand that we have both types in Australia?

*baits, not hairs. Fuck knows what hairs have to do with cockroaches.

Bermuda rolled up in the car one night the headlights hit the wall of a house the whole wall moved it was a sea of cockroaches . I was told they crawl over you at night.

Unpacking advice do it outside, any clothes straight into the washing machine.

Baygone used to be the best thing to buy in Bermuda.

@HoppingPavlova are you being serious? There would be hundreds every single day? I can't even imagine the horror.

I feel lucky I’ve never come across a cockroach before! Do we even get them in the UK? Or are they just not very common here?

I'm so weird. I'd be more scared of a cockroach than the creatures that could actually harm me
I feel genuinely incredibly repelled by them.

This thread has made me think of the film Arachnophobia!

Have you moved for your husbands job? Because he sounds very big, clever and important

Yeah our house had been empty for 6 months and when you turned on the light the walls were seething with the bastards. We couldn't spray due to toddler with massive sensitivities to everything so it was baits. Eventually got rid of them.

And they were all over the house, why would anyone think Aussie cockies are trained to stay out of living spaces?

They carry diseases including hepatitis C.

I am utterly revolted by them.

i live in oz as well and I’d much rather a cockroach than a bloody Huntsman spider

This thread needs a trigger warning 😶

I live in southern Spain and we get the brown ones, about the size of your thumb. We fumigate every year but still see them. Not every day and mostly at night. We went away for a week in July and came back to 4 bodies. This year hasn´t been too bad actually.
I fucking hate them. I know they can´t hurt me and I´m quite good about killing them (always spray then stamp) but ugh, so gross. It´s the noise they make as they scuttle. After a year or so here I was horrified to discover they can fly hahaha!

Never come across cockroach shit though.

I used to live in Hong Kong. The blighters got everywhere. I found a roasted roach when I cleaned out the crumb tray of my toaster. I haven’t been able to eat toast since then.

Bleurgh, I can’t bear them, I don’t even know why as I like most insects and am happy to collect spiders and move them, but cockroaches make me want to scream. I was once in an ice cream shop in Italy waiting in the queue and I saw a big cockroach walk all around the floor then out through the door and off down the street. I watched it for a while trying to work out why I found it so scary and revolting but I still don’t know.

that bucket and chickens story is making me heave!

The best thing I can say about cockroachs is that living in India and the horror of having to face them every day (dead on the floor, alive in the cupboards, flying - no one tells you those fuckers can fly!!!) has totally cured me of my prior arachnophobia.

There is no UK spider ever bad enough that it competes with those hairy legged bloody roaches.

The first morning I woke back in the UK and could jump out of bed without first having to check the floor for dead roach, was a beautiful beautiful dawn

How hard is it to understand that we have both types in Australia?

I think lots of places do. I know in India they had those big, flatter bodied, reddish brown American* roaches and the smaller, more rounded bodied, darker brown German ones.

*Not that I think they are specific to those countries, it's just that's what they were called when I looked them up.

In my 20s went to stay with relative who was studying at UCLA. He had a grotty flat that had cockroaches and they frequently ran over my feet at night.

Went to a French city on exchange aged 14. Beautiful flat in a 1749 building centre of town. On the ground floor there was a bakery. When you went into the downstairs entrance hall after dark and switched on the light thousands of cockroaches were briefly visible as they scattered to the corners. French family completely blasé.

DD had one in her make up bag on return from Portugal. The makeup had been in her suitcase on the hold so the blighter was a bit chilly and groggy, quite easy to round up.
That was an expensive trip to Boots afterwards though.

They definitely are in mainland europe.
They came in apparently in huge rice bags many years ago and many old city buildings have them in their fabric.

35 years ago I moved in and out of a lovely old apartment in one month because of them.

I was terrified of bringing them with me I packed up and moved so friends helped.

I had the new flat sprayed to be double sure and fortunately never saw another one.
The whole sleeping at night was frightening, the thought that they might crawl over me.
It was the kitchen and loo where I found they mainly congregated.
When on holidays in Australia they were a shock in the cities, but people rightly focus more on the variety of critters that can kill them.

I agree, it seems so much better this year.
I have the ginormous black ones in Valencia. Huge.

I have recently got a rescue cat, I have a feeling (despite his food being out) they know he is there.