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 😇

We get them in NZ too!

Gisborne Cockroaches (not just in Gisborne) are up to 45mm long and are in our wood pile, hide under the BBQ cover and come into the housatat times too. I'm okay with them and just scoop up with a glass and chuck back outside but my ds freaks out a bit.

However, having stayed in a village in Samoa all the bugs there were huge (and we couldn't leave food out overnight or it was full of holes/infested). Apparently PNG is even worse but not on my list of travel destinations.

@adriftabroad is that normal in Valencia?

Am visiting there in the near future🤢.

I was told once the are in a building, there is NO getting rid of them.

You can manage them with pest control, but there isn't any permanent solution.

😂

But you know you want to really....

At this point I should introduce you to the Parktown Prawn. Now that is one ugly motherfucker. Looks a cross between a cockroach and a cricket, pinkish in colour. But they jump 👀. Even my dogs steer clear of those.

A cockroach is quite mild compared to a Parktown Prawn.

I live in West Africa atm and have seen a few and they are massive, but with a combination of fumigation which landlords do regularly, screened windows and using the air con when it's hotter (which they don't seem to like?) I've only seen a couple in the house and despite my hardcore bug phobia, they don't bother me as much as I expected. Possibly because all our beds have to have mosquito nets so I know I am protected in my sleep...

We're moving elsewhere next year and this thread has given me nightmares about opening my boxes and finding cockroaches :-o

Yes to hating mosquitos more, malarial, dengue-carrying little fuckers. I am breastfeeding at the moment and it seems to make me delicious to mosquitos, got bit (in the day!) three times the other day including two on my elbow which swelled up so much it looked like I had three elbows on one arm. Lovely.

Here you go. Found one in my pool recently. I'm not ashamed to say they are not good swimmers and it was the best place I could have found it.

They used to be more common here, particularly in old, large, multiple-resident buildings, but I have only seen one once in the past two decades and that was on the floor of the hospital as I was being wheeled in for a c-section ! Ugggh.
I once had two arrive in an organic veg box delivery, they were in with some salad leaves. I was paranoid for months that one might have have escaped unseen but thankfully not.

I actually keep and breed cockroaches (on purpose ) as food for my lizards and tarantulas. These are dubia cockroaches, they are pretty big and need heat to breed, so no worries about them taking over the house if any escape.

I also used to have the largest type of cockroach, a kind of hissing cockroach, mainly to feed to my giant gecko (a leachianus ). But I just stick to the dubia's for them now.

I purchased a set of ice lolly moulds once, and when I opened it at home several baby cockroaches were nesting in one of them 🤢

I can never not see this now!! This thread needs a trigger warning. F*ing hell, I'm never setting foot overseas again 😫

Cockroaches are a very ancient species and have survived down the millennia for a reason - they're indestructible. So yes, I think they'd laugh in the face of a nuclear bomb. I like the idea that chickens can make short work of them though.

The image I can't get out of my head is of them crawling over you in the night. Shudder!! The very thought of them dropping into your open mouth as you sleep........

We had a customer who drove an unmarked van wore plain white overalls. He was a contract exterminator whose biggest client was the health board hospitals. The hospital laundry always had a problem with infested linen.

This was in the 90's.

Yes, I wasn’t always this brave.

when we first arrived in Australia DP was driving us to the shops and I felt something tickling my neck. I looked in the mirror and just caught sight of a cockroach disappearing down the front of my top.

I seriously thought I was going to have a heart attack. I screamed and jumped out of the car, jumping up and down with my top over my head. DP thought I was having a seizure lol.

I'm ok now, you get used to the little buggers eventually.

Boak.

https://jeevoka.com/8-animals-that-would-happily-survive-a-nuclear-war/s

They are in the streets, everywhere (after dark) all along the coast. But you will not have them in a hotel, dont worry. They fumigate reguarly... the hotels, streets, everywhere.

In my flat I have seen 1 live one twice and 2 dead ones, since June.

Also, miraculously no mosquitoes... they fumigate for those too.

Honestly, it is fine this year. Worry about the heat! xxx Have a great time.

Also, someone puts something in the drains in my building every June... they die.

A fly landed on my leg as I was reading this thread and I jumped out of my skin and hit my knee really badly on my desk!

But yet I still can't stop reading!

I lived in Taiwan as a child. My sister and brother and I used to fight with who had to sit in the middle of the car. One evening a large cockroach got caught in my long hair as we were getting in the car. I was hysterical but my parents just ignored me as they thought it was due to me having to sit in the middle!

See, I knew I'd read it somewhere!

@adriftabroad ...thank you...I think😳😁

I didn't realise they were in UK until myself,DH and newborn baby were put into a homeless hotel. The place was infested and to this day I still eyeball every insect on the off chance it's a roach. Vile things🤢

😮😳

@isthismylifenow my SA friends once told me about the Parktown Prawn, I googled. They are an abomination and infiltrated a few dreams after I looked them up 😱

Leaving this thread now as the images have started 😩😂

I love living in Southern Europe but the creepy crawlies can be traumatising. An XL centipede crawled into the bottom of our pram once while it was sitting in the garage. Now those bastards are nasty!

Not true.

Actually you're not supposed to squash them as it does release the eggs thereby spreading them 😕