The Best Way To Deal With Cockroaches In Your Boston Home
Have you ever been rummaging through that favorite catch-all drawer in the kitchen when your eye suddenly catches a flash of movement? You jump back as a brown bug emerges, crawling from the dark recesses of the drawer. Say hello to the cockroach. These shudder-inducing creatures aren’t just creepy to look at. They are Boston homeowners’ most formidable pests, and their unsanitary lifestyles pose serious health risks for your family.
Boston Cockroaches
What kind of cockroaches hang out in Boston? The three most common cockroaches are the American cockroach, the German cockroach, and the Oriental cockroach. The most common indoor roach, the German cockroach, is a light brown color with distinct black stripes behind its head. At 1/2” in size, these roaches prefer warm, dark, and humid locales like the kitchen, bathroom, or attic. The American cockroach is the largest home-invading cockroach, measuring 2” long. This reddish-brown cockroach enjoys warm, moist areas under sinks, in the bathroom, and even in drainpipes. The Oriental cockroach likes to travel and is typically transported into your home in luggage, bags, or boxes. It is dark brown with shiny black stripes on its head and measures about 1” in size.
With the largest genome of any researched insect, cockroaches are incredibly resilient. Cockroaches have 154 olfactory receptors, which means they can sense food sources from far off. Cockroaches will eat anything from rotting food to hair and fingernails and human excrement. They chow down on the dead and wounded of their own too. Their unsanitary lifestyle helps them transport over 33 bacteria into homes.
The Most Formidable Pests
Cockroaches can enter your Boston home from just about anywhere. Homeowners can transport them in unsealed garbage containers, bags, or luggage. Cockroaches can slip through cracks and crevices in foundations or gaps around windows and doors. They’ve been known to crawl up sewage lines and pipes right into bathrooms and kitchens. Yeah, that’s right. They can swim too. For these reasons, it’s easy for cockroaches to infiltrate your home’s defenses. And because of the cockroaches’ nature, it’s difficult to get them out.
Cockroaches can survive for weeks without water and months without food. Cockroaches will molt in several stages throughout their lifetime, shedding the exoskeleton each time. During this time, cockroaches re-generate lost limbs and adapt to their environments. At maturity, female cockroaches lay hundreds of eggs. Then, the cockroaches signal to their friends through pheromones to come and join them as they host get-togethers in your cupboards.
One stray cockroach quickly turns into thousands.
Don’t Do This At Home
When you see these disgusting creatures, you may feel driven to go out and buy as many pesticides from your local hardware store as possible. But, the professionals at Urbanex recommend that you don’t.
Why not? Because DIY pest control methods often fail to get rid of ALL the cockroaches. When home or business owners attempt to apply DIY treatments to cockroach infestations, the problems could potentially get worse, not better. Cockroaches can basically code their own DNA to become resistant to toxic chemicals, and they pass this genetic code to their offspring.
But do you know who isn’t immune to chemicals? The people inside your home, especially children and pets. Overuse or improper use of store-bought chemicals can cause painful skin allergies, nausea, and seizures. Ingestion of pesticides could cause death.
What Do I Do If My Boston Home Has Cockroaches?
The best way to protect yourself and your family from the dangers of cockroaches is with professional assistance. The team at Urbanex has been serving the Boston-area for decades. We use EPA approved substances that are safe for your home, your family, and your pets. Call Urbanex to get rid of cockroaches once and for all.
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