OT: scary

They will die if you spray them with kerosene. I used to keep some kerosene in a little spray bottle at our frat house at Georgia Tech and spritz the little bastards.

Powder coating powder seems to do wonders on killing these immortal creatures. No idea why, but my powder coating shed was FULL of roaches prior to doing powder coating. Now that there is powder coating over spray all over the place, not a insect in sight.. Even wasps fall out of the sky when they get into the powder coating powder.

All I can figure is the powder is small enough to get into their joints, and heat from friction causes it to start curing.

BTW, I'm in Florida, working in a wood out building with a mostly dirt floor. This is usually a prime breeding ground for cockroaches, well at least it used to be :)

Take Care, James Lerch

(My telescope construction, Testing, and Coating site)

Press on: nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. Calvin Coolidge

Actually, nasty as they are, they are not immortal - you just need to understand that a microwave is a big cavity with the microwave energy running around, HOWEVER, by definition, the voltage at the metal wall of the microwave is always 0. This is why when stuff splatters in the microwave, it doesn't "bake" onto the walls. Now if you put the little bastards on a paper plate elevated from the bottom of the microwave (this is why there is space under the tray at the bottom), I suspect they would go off like popcorn ... yuck !!

mikey

They probably were avoiding the hot spots in the oven. To see where the hotspots are for yourself, perform this experiment: Wet the glass platter with a sponge, lay a sheet of paper across it and use the sponge to squeegee out the air bubbles and get the paper uniformly wet. If there is a carousel thingee that rotates the platter, remove it for this test. Now run the oven for 30-45 seconds. The dry areas on the paper will show where the hot spots are located.

Fred

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The low-tech approach is to buy an appropriate lizard and let the lizard run loose. I have lived in many old apartment houses which suffer from las cucharachas. Even if you wiped them out 100% in your unit it's likely someone else has a big problem. The idea is then to minimize them in your unit and to disincentivize them from being there. They move freely from apartment to apartment. Clean meticulously, and put out some Roach Motels. They work fine. Put one in your refrigerator, and if they like your microwave, put one in there too. Read up on control on the Web, and learn to live with them. Most people on the planet do, after all.

GWE

I forgot to say, complain to your apartment manager too! - GWE

But then instant cremation is not an option.

I tried the same experiment with little brown ants in my microwave with the same result. My theory was that the ants were too small to be decent antennas (I guess that's a pun, huh?) for energy at around 2.3 GHz.

Seems the roaches should be big enough, but maybe not the parts containing water. I sprayed a little water on the dish where the ants were in the microwave and stewed them.

Later I changed my "ant war" technique to using a fast moving propane torch on low flame. Worked well as long as I moved fast enough not to scorch any parts of my house. I don't think it would be useful for roaches, though.

Chloroform works pretty quickly on them too. We used to use that on them when I worked a summer in a lab trailer in Orlando.

As I recall the right powder will kill cockroaches. Not even a poisonous powder. Just one that gets on their body and when it falls off it takes a bit of the wax on the outside of the cockroaches body. The first stuff I read about was for thickening ink as I recall. So do a little searching on the internet and see what is currently recommended.

Oh yes the way it works is they lose some of the wax on their bodies. With the wax missing, water vapor can escape and the cockroaches dehydrate and die.

Dan

boric acid is effective - spread powder around edges of floor, etc - it gets on their exoskeleton and they dessicate. and it's non toxic and environmentally friendly and very cheap

409 cleaner does the same thing... the water in it has literally no surface tension and the liquid immediately surrounds the ant, cockroach... whatever. Even knocks wasps right out of the air. Even use it on wasps at poolside when they come in for a drink on the surface of the pool water... ZAP! They immediately sink into the water and get collected and disposed of.

Bill

People fear and hate wasps. I used to, too. I once found a wasp's nest about the size of a softball and removed it. A week later my plum trees (about 30' away) were covered with aphids. The yellowjackets are carnivorous. They eat bugs. They like meat, too, which is why they're attracted to barbecuing meat. Now when we see yellowjackets at a barbecue I cut off a tiny piece of meat (head of a pin) and tell the kids to watch this, and put it out on a corner of the table. Soon a wasp will land, carefully pick it up, and fly away, and he WON'T COME BACK. If 3 or 4 aggressive (hungry) wasps show up at a barbecue, try giving them a few tenths of a gram of meat.

When was the last time you actually got stung? People can live quite well with bees and wasps once you take the time to learn a little about them. And they are very beneficial insects.

GWE

Yup. Get a plastic squeeze bottle with a long nozzle and a small hole in the tip. Fill it ~25% with powdered boric acid. Shake it to get a nice dust cloud and then poke the nozzle into cracks and crevices (particularly under counters in your kitchen) and blow the dust in. You want a nice even layer of dust to coat all the crawling spaces. As William wrote, boric acid is non-toxic, so you don't have to worry about it around your food stuffs. In fact, some pest control experts suggest dusting your carpets with boric acid powder to control fleas and roaches.

Incidentally, boric acid is also a great chemical to use to control termites. Mix up a solution with water and spray wood or foam it into walls. Termites won't eat wood that's been treated. Boric acid also stops fungal wood rot.

Basically, it's a great all-around pesticide/fungicide that's effective, non-toxic, and cheap (it's simply mined out of the ground). Too bad lumber companies don't pressure treat all construction lumber with boric acid.

- Michael

Where can one get boric acid?

Hum...are we talking cockroaches or chicks here? (G, D, R) Dave Mundt