sasaki@harvard.ARPA (Marty Sasaki) (08/21/85)
Thanks to all who responded. Rather than just post the responses, I've
chosen to just summarize everything.
1. Use boric acid. Sprinkle it around where roaches walk. Pick
one of two reasons that this works: 1) roaches clean the
powder off of themselves which cause them to dehydrate, or
2) the stuff gets into the joints and abrades little holes
causing dehydration.
You can add gelatin, sugar, or flour to the boric acid to
increase it's effectiveness.
2. Use plaster-of-paris with some kind of bait (sugar, gelatin,
or flour). The reason here is that consuming the p-of-p not
only dehydrates, but also causes severe gastro-intestinal (or
the roach equivalent) distress when the p-of-p hardens.
3. Use diatoms. Diatomaceous earth is a fine powder consisting of
the spiny skeletons of single cell animals. It is used as a
filter medium for swimming pools and aquariums. The spines are
also supposed to cause roach-digestive distress.
4. Fill every crack you can find. One fellow suggested using
steel wool to fill the cracks since any roach that got through
would have it's exoskeleton abraided.
5. Be extremely tidy, vacuum corners and cracks often. Store food
in containers that provide a good seal. Pour chlorine bleach
down drains (roaches can, and do live in places like the
overflow drain in sinks and tubs.
6. There is a sex-hormone bait/trap called Combat that is
supposed to be highly effective.
7. Use Roach Pruf (spellings varied, this spelling got three
votes). Many responded that Roach Pruf is really boric acid
with some kind of bait. A friend told me that RP has diatoms
as well. Paul Harvey raves about this.
Thanks to all those that responded. I ended up trying the gelatin and
plaster of paris concoction which seems to be working. The
exterminator that my landlord hired suggested that when I want to try
poisons that he could paint the stuff on the baseboards and dribble it
into cracks rather than spray it. If the stuff that I'm using doesn't
work, I will probably have him do this.
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Marty Sasaki net: sasaki@harvard.{arpa,uucp}
Havard University Science Center phone: 617-495-1270
One Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138