there is a giant cockroach loose in my kids' bedroom

[sunnywong]

I was lying in bed with just the laptop for light and I thought I heard and saw an empty crisp packet rustle and float to the foot of the bed. Just my imagination
Then I saw a fricking beat the size of a bourbon biscuit with antennae 4 inches long sitting next to me.
I screamed and leaped out of bed, called for dh, and it flew in to the kids' room under the bunk bed. We can hardly spray Mortein over our sleeping angels and the bloody thing won't come out to be beaten with a rolled up newspaper, although it was such a glossy robust specimen I think it would need beating with an axe handle.
It's the heat. Makes them very social.
Feck.

I lived in Thailand years ago - woke up one night thinking I could feel something on my back. Lept out of bed and banged the light off as this thing fell off and hit the floor - massive cockroach that I beat to death with a snorkel.

you need a tennis racket or bat to smash it when it comes out - cockroaches are just horrible things and they are so hard to squash when they get big. Yuuuck.

thank your lucky stars you don't get these - I used to lie in bed with a tennis racket because they are like cockroaches but they jump right at you and you have to bat them away

OMG, I feel sick and I am in the northern hemisphere. I'm a veggie but you really must kill the little b*stard, NOW!!

stamp on it!

goosebumps ...... we had them in our appartment in Greece on holiday once, the manager told us not to squash them as the eggs come out and in the morning you'l have thousands..........YUCK!

I'd run away.................FAST

sw - I remember all too clear walking down murray street in perth at 9pm, with them just running out bold as anything.

And where I used to live south of the river... URGH

You cant drown the Fukrs ether, they live through anything, and they're like rats if you have one....Oh i need to go bleach the kitchen, its like if someone said the word nits, Yep your scratching!

I'v heard they spread typhoid too, I'd pick the babies up right now take them to your parents and fumigate.

well it's the morning now and no more was heard of it in the night. Although I do have a very small crunchy stick wedged between my teeth...

AAAARRRGGHHH have been half laughing/half heaving reading this. Childhood memories of African roaches. Check your ears!!!

You need lure and kill Mortein. Though it is scary seeing all the dead little buggers and realising how many you are sharing your house with!

DH has been out to get the Lure and Kill.

Do they eat the bait then piss off to die or do you wake up with a mound of dead beetles?

lure and kill baits - they are the ones we have - they take the poison back to the nest and kill the others.... you may see the odd dead one around but will not have your floor covered in them iyswim

flying cockroaches - just as gross.... the dds have a gecko in their room - have left the window open for him/her to escape but not sure if they took the hint.

Sorry, but I'm on entomological pedantry duty today and am obliged to point out that cockroaches aren't beetles.

Yes, I know that's a little unhelpful, but perhaps this cockroach trap for ponces may be useful to you.

oh hallgerda thanks for that, I like the idea but am a chavtastic instant drinker

Are they not beetles then what manner of hell spawn are they?

Some classifications put cockroaches in their own order, Blattodea or Blattaria (can't do italics - sorry!); others lump them in with mantids in an order called Dictyoptera. They're different from beetles (order Coleoptera) in that they undergo incomplete metamorphosis (egg - nymph - adult) rather than complete metamorphosis (egg - larva - pupa - adult).

According to Wikipedia, it's a myth about the cockroaches inheriting the earth in the event of a nuclear disaster - true, they stand more chance than we do, but fruitflies have greater radiation resistance.

With lure and kill the big buggers make it back home and kill everyone else. But the odd medium size one doesn't make it home and dies on the floor.

It's fab stuff though. The flights to the South Pacific always get there late at night, so I carry my own bottle. We got a room in Samoa that obviously hadn't been used for a while and it was the night from hell - never again.

OMG shouldnt have read this thread, cockroaches make me physically sick {retching emoticon}