Pest Control and Bug Exterminator Blog

Transcript from Roach Control-How Roaches get in your sink:

“The roaches come in from out here; they shoot up underneath the J-rail, and start infesting inside the walls.”

“Roaches are thigmatropic, thigmatropic. You can say that however you want to say, thigmatropic, however you want to say it. I believe that’s the correct spelling, if it’s not, you know, who cares. But, this word right here means that they prefer to have pressure on three sides of their body at all times. It’s the way that they feel safe”.

“I’ll give you an example: Mammals, we use our vision to feel safe. If we put a blind fold over Riley’s head. And tell him to walk across, the freeway? He’s going to take that blind fold off before he walks across the freeway. He doesn’t feel safe. Well, most invertebrates like roaches, scorpions, crickets; they don’t feel safe unless they have pressure on three sides of their bodies, it’s how they’ve survived for so long. They stay in cracks and crevices. It’s different with mammals, we rely in vision. I tell you this because it’s not normal for the roaches to come out. They prefer to never come out. They would prefer never to see the homeowner. Just never, ever come out. They always want to stay; they don’t want to walk across that freeway with a blind fold on, okay? I’m trying to explain this.”

“But, it gets so crowded back there and so populous that they start coming out. They start to be forced out. They’re cannibalistic. They’ll eat each other. The weaker ones are going to flee. So, they won’t run out along this pipeline and hang out inside the cabinet, a lot of times, they’ll, they’ll, there’s a backing to the actual cabinetry. It’s not the sheetrock, in most cabinetry, there’s a backing. And it’s maybe just an eighth of an inch between the sheetrock and the backing of the cabinet, and that backing is a great location for roaches to hang out, between the cabinets and the wall itself. So, they’ll hang out in between there, and at night when it’s dark, they might run up around up onto the sink, looking for soap scum, looking for toothpaste, things like that, okay- Hair follicles off the, you know, off of a hair brush.”

“Every now and then, one falls into the sink at night and runs around, but cannot get out because the sides are too slick. Eventually, the sun starts coming up and he says I’ve got to get out of here, so he shoots down the drain and hangs out right by the water; he’s like cool, new place, going to inhabit this place, okay? He can’t get all the way down into the sewer because this is what’s called a P-trap right here, it’s always filled with water, that’s what the green represents. The water prevents gases from the sewer lines and pests like roaches and mice from coming up the drain.”

“These roaches will never come up the drain. And then Betsy comes in, in the morning time, turns on the water, she sees no roaches, right? And she turns on the water; the water comes out of the spicket, out of the spicket, into the drain and starts to flood this guy, so he comes running out and she thinks she thinks roaches are coming out of her drain. But, they’re not. The roaches are infested in her wall. One fell into her drain and was hiding there for her because he couldn’t get back out.

- Bulwark Exterminating Roach Control

Transcript from How Roaches Infest-Roach Control:

Roach Control Professional: “- storm drain system: Because the fact is, is that the roaches in every metropolitan city in the United States, these roaches, American roaches and oriental cockroaches, called “water bugs”, breed and thrive in the sewer lines. But, the problem that we have here in the desert is that- these sewer lines- we go a long time without rain, and they dry out. In the heat of the summer, the sewer lines will dry out.” “These water bugs require water, right? They don’t swim in it, but they need to be in a moist environment, a warm, damp, moist environment, preferably dark. So they, at a very warm period of time, in the summer, they start exiting through the storm drains, that’s this right here, or through the actual sewer manhole. And they run because the street is hot, a lot of times exodus is at nighttime, and if you’re out at night, sometimes you can actually see them do this. If you watch and become aware, they exodus, they make this big exodus off the hot pavement, looking for some place to hide, right? They go right into the rock. You know how the rock out here in the yard is, it’s easy to get under it.” “So they get up underneath the rock where there’s some moisture in the soil up underneath the rock until they find a plant with a water dripper on it. Now, that’s what this little red thing is, its a little water dripper.” “We’ve talked about how plants need water and how they’re fed, they’re watered every two to three days, and how the moisture underneath the plant is always there.” “So, now our water bugs left the sewer because of a lack of water and the heat of the summer, came into the yards, and have infested all of the yards in your neighborhood. This is the reason you guys see water bugs when you walk around outside in the evening time, or your evening walks. Because your neighborhood is infested, all of the yards in the neighborhood are infested with water bugs.” “Now, they breed out here and they do really well and they thrive, but expanding populations always do just that, expand. And in the very dead of the summer, when we’re talking one hundred and ten, one hundred and fifteen degrees, these rocks are in direct sunlight right here, and they get so hot that the roaches start looking for better places to live. It gets actually too hot for them. So, they proceed to look for a shady place, and often find places next to the house shady; this purple stuff you see coming out of the wall here is moist air.” “We talked about how there’s condensation on the exterior walls of stucco homes and how there’s a J-rail here, and how it’s open, and how moist air escapes so that we don’t get black mold in the wall? Well, this moist air escaping, not visible to the eye but sensible to an insect, draws these roaches, plus the darkness and the shade, up into the J-rail, up into the wall.” - Bulwark Exterminating Roach Control

Transcript from How Roaches Infest-Roach Control:

Roach Control Professional:

“- storm drain system: Because the fact is, is that the roaches in every metropolitan city in the United States, these roaches, American roaches and oriental cockroaches, called “water bugs”, breed and thrive in the sewer lines. But, the problem that we have here in the desert is that- these sewer lines- we go a long time without rain, and they dry out. In the heat of the summer, the sewer lines will dry out.”

“These water bugs require water, right? They don’t swim in it, but they need to be in a moist environment, a warm, damp, moist environment, preferably dark. So they, at a very warm period of time, in the summer, they start exiting through the storm drains, that’s this right here, or through the actual sewer manhole. And they run because the street is hot, a lot of times exodus is at nighttime, and if you’re out at night, sometimes you can actually see them do this. If you watch and become aware, they exodus, they make this big exodus off the hot pavement, looking for some place to hide, right? They go right into the rock. You know how the rock out here in the yard is, it’s easy to get under it.”

“So they get up underneath the rock where there’s some moisture in the soil up underneath the rock until they find a plant with a water dripper on it. Now, that’s what this little red thing is, its a little water dripper.”

“We’ve talked about how plants need water and how they’re fed, they’re watered every two to three days, and how the moisture underneath the plant is always there.”

“So, now our water bugs left the sewer because of a lack of water and the heat of the summer, came into the yards, and have infested all of the yards in your neighborhood. This is the reason you guys see water bugs when you walk around outside in the evening time, or your evening walks. Because your neighborhood is infested, all of the yards in the neighborhood are infested with water bugs.”

“Now, they breed out here and they do really well and they thrive, but expanding populations always do just that, expand. And in the very dead of the summer, when we’re talking one hundred and ten, one hundred and fifteen degrees, these rocks are in direct sunlight right here, and they get so hot that the roaches start looking for better places to live. It gets actually too hot for them. So, they proceed to look for a shady place, and often find places next to the house shady; this purple stuff you see coming out of the wall here is moist air.”

“We talked about how there’s condensation on the exterior walls of stucco homes and how there’s a J-rail here, and how it’s open, and how moist air escapes so that we don’t get black mold in the wall? Well, this moist air escaping, not visible to the eye but sensible to an insect, draws these roaches, plus the darkness and the shade, up into the J-rail, up into the wall.”

- Bulwark Exterminating Roach Control

We have had this particular customer for about 2 yrs and in the mean time she had a relative come and move in with her.  Her relative brought several boxes and along with them an infestation of German cockroaches.  But, since the tech never knew about these boxes we continued doing regular treatments until 2 months after the relative had moved in which was June.  At some point she needed to get some things out of one of the boxes and stirred the roaches to life. Since the boxes were stirred she was getting an influx of roaches into her home so she called us and we went out to do a roach treatment as a callback.  She called back 2 weeks later and she was then due for her regular service at this point so we treated for her regular service along with the interior for these same roaches.  This went on for 2 months and she now wanted a manager to go out to her house and get this situated. I told her that I would take care of this along with a tech to double team this problem.  Little did I know how bad this problem was. Although they did not make it upstairs their problem was still severe, but we did an intensive treatment and set up a follow up the very next Friday.  This time I took a different tech to show them how bad the situation was.  When we arrived the problem was still there but did see several dead roaches, so went at it another way with a full Nygaurd interior treatment.  Nygaurd is a product that we use that is labeled for roaches.  This is something that we have not tried in our office till this year so we set up another follow up and came back the following week and several more dead roaches were found. So at this point we proceeded to treat under her dishwasher and her stove to extend the barrier and set another follow up.  The last follow up she did not show so I baited the outside and left a note for her to call me.  When she called her statement to me was since she had not seen anymore roaches she did not think that she needed to be there.  We still went one more time to follow up and had not even seen any more dead roaches.  We still treat this customer to this day. In our last conversation she told me that she blames it on her relatives who no longer live with her but brought the roaches, and that she is for ever grateful that we are her pest control company.

Ben Montes
Austin Manager