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 😇

See I'm not bothered by that prawn thing at all. To me that looks like a cricket and just isn't scary. But the cockroach picture someone posted really made my skin crawl and made me want to cry. Ugh ugh it's something about the legs, flat back and hairiness. <wail>

I feel chilled to the bone after reading this thread. I'm sitting here shuddering.

I had a cockroach under my bed in France once. It didn't like being zapped with one of those electrified tennis racquets.

I've never seen one in the UK. Moths are at the top of my fear hierarchy, followed by fat spiders. A few years ago I spotted a large moth on my living room wall. I instinctively gathered all my things, sealed off the room and didn't re-enter until the following day, which was difficult as my kitchen adjoins my living room. I was paranoid for ages afterwards.

My cat has caught a few spiders but he gets bored with them quickly and is easily distracted. He seems to keep them at bay at least. Before I got him I trapped an enormous spider in a pyrex dish. I hate killing things so I shuffled a chopping board under it and put it outside, but didn't dare lift the dish in case it found its way back in. I started to feel bad for it so I very carefully slid a leaf with a caterpillar on it under the dish... the bloody thing leapt for it! In the end my boyfriend at the time helped me to walk it down the road and release it.

When I was in India my boob felt a bit itchy at work, then I got home and took my bra off and a dead cockroach fell out!!! 😃

😆 and also 😱

I read that as 45cm at first... 😂😂

My daughter used to breed Madagascan hissing cockroaches and had about 80 at one point. One evening I awoke to the sound of an odd noise and the cats playing on the stairs. At first I thought that the funny noise was a child’s toy making the kind of noise it does when the battery is going flat. I got up to find a large roach had escaped and the cat was playing with it. The noise was coming from the roach who was trying to defend itself.

I lived in an infested house years ago in Spain and had the fumigator out a lot and since then have fumigated every year wherever I live. I aksed the fumigator I always used about this and he said it is not true.

Has anyone seen the King Kong Movie with Adrien Brodu when they go to that conveniently undiscovered island and the scene where they basically become roach food?!!! This thread is giving me flashbacks to that!!!

Just horrible

I’d been in Arizona, drove a couple of hundred miles away and found a scorpion in my suitcase at the next stop!

There were cockroaches in my student flat in Spain, it was my first encounter with them. They stink!

I'm also somewhat phobic of cockroaches, but living in a tropical country I've more or less got used to seeing them outside. Only had one get inside the apartment once so far, thank fuck, but it was a HUGE fucker - luckily it was on the curtain in front of a sliding door and I managed to fling it out at great velocity. I've flatshared with lizards here a few times and I suspect that helps!

I'd never heard that about spreading the eggs around, but I hate the idea of stamping on them anyway - first the crunch () and second the idea of having to sweep up bits of squished cockroach afterwards () No thank you.

I have never heard of smelly cockroaches!

They have a definite 'roachie' smell.

Maybe not, but, they could definitely see you

I have lived in the Uk for over 40 years and never seen a cockroach or a bedbug. Have had an infestation of weevils thanks to not freezing my flour.

We have a few diff types in the UK most common is the German cockroach. They're only little and like warm dark spaces (like behind the fridge) if you live near a HMO or in a flat above a shop in London chances are someone close by has an infestation. You can spray for them but they're hardy little fuckers. A poison that distrups growth works best alongside good housekeeping but once they're in any form of attached property they're damn near impossible to get rid of completely.

When I was a child I lived in Singapore from age 6 to 7. An abiding memory is that there must have been a cockroach 'season' - and at one stage the path to my school was literally covered completely with a carpet of cockroaches. It was a bit crunchy but we just had to run over them to get to the classroom.

(Similar with giant red ants - we used to run through those nests barefoot in the garden and as long as you were quick you were fine).

I don't remember cockroaches in the house - it was just on that path and only at one point in the season. Pretty yuck - but you just get on with it.

Maybe they were fumigating? In Spain you sometimes get that if they fumigate, especially if it's an área where there's a nest or a lot of them, they try to flee the poison.

Oh maybe, I have no idea and didn't question it at the time, just can still picture that carpet of bugs from 1971 or 72 as if it were yesterday.....{grin]

I am off to Australia next week. I was so excited but now I'm horrified that these are going to be crawling over me as I sleep! I fully expected spiders and snakes, but not bloody cockroaches

See this is why you should NEVER leave the country.

Not to fear everyone, DH is busy fixing up the walls in the bedroom and moving the heavier furniture into place with the help of a neighbour!

I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds the buggers absolutely insidious