The Cockroach Problem

Some years ago I bought a house that — unknown to me at the time — had a severe infestation of cockroaches. This is the story of how I got rid of them. Not a pleasant story, but one that might contain some useful information for anyone else with the same problem.

I don’t know why I didn’t see that the house suffered from a severe roach infestation when I bought it, except that I saw the house during the daytime and roaches tend to come out in the night. Also, I wasn’t looking for roaches, probably because I didn’t know they could be so bad.

And they were bad. Soon after I moved in I couldn’t help but notice. They would cross the floor of the living room as I was watching television. They would scatter when I turned on the kitchen light late at night. It took me a while to unpack after I moved in; I had moving boxes stacked on the living room floor. Eventually, every time I moved one, dozens of roaches would scatter to find a new hiding spot. The first time I looked behind the fridge I nearly fainted; there were dozens of them there too. I saw them in the basement. They showed up in the bathroom. I came to understand an old Jimmie J.J. Walker joke that had never made sense to me. (“Cockroaches must be the cleanest insect — every time you see them, they’re in the bathtub!”) Honestly, I had never seen so many cockroaches, in my bathtub or anywhere else, until I bought this particular house.

The problem wasn’t quite as bad as E.G. Marshall faced in Creepshow — but it reminded me of that scene, and that was bad enough!

The question was: what could I do to get rid of them?