July 23, 2007 at 10:59 pm
· Filed under how to, memories
This is a response to this post about pesky cucarachas:

Living in a small rustic house with three (sometimes five) college guys in Abilene, Texas, I wasn’t sure who was to blame for the cockroaches. Things weren’t exactly kept clean. But one summer, I stayed to work while others left town. The roaches didn’t leave with them.
I happened to run into the landlord and I mentioned the bugs. His response was unexpected. “Yeah, but don’t worry. They’re tree roaches. They just come inside to look for water.” He went on to explain that the typical cockroaches people worry about are a different, smaller kind. They get into your food, but these don’t.
To get rid of them, he suggested a unique attack. Let’s call it the banana borax blitz:
- Step 1: Chop up a banana and leave it outside near where you think they might be coming inside.
- Step 2: After midnight, go outside to check the banana. You should find more cockroaches than you ever wanted to see in one place.
- Step 3: Lightly dust them with borax, or powdered boric acid. You can buy it at most grocery stores.
- Step 4: Panic as they scatter. Beware, these things can and fly when disturbed!
When cockroaches clean themselves, they eat the powder. Death is swift. I actually watched a few slowly crawl away and flip over with a kind of cockroach kabuki gesture.
It turns out boric acid is well documented for killing roaches (although others suggest a more subtle approach). Four of the top 10 results on Google are from .edu’s.
Permalink |

Luka wrote @ October 16th, 2012 at 11:00 pm

Paul wrote @ October 17th, 2012 at 5:38 am

anna wrote @ October 17th, 2012 at 8:16 pm

Paul wrote @ October 18th, 2012 at 5:37 am
nikki wrote @ November 13th, 2012 at 9:41 am

Paul wrote @ November 13th, 2012 at 10:05 am

Tony wrote @ December 4th, 2012 at 7:33 am
gabriel wrote @ March 29th, 2013 at 2:27 am

Gabrielle92 wrote @ July 26th, 2013 at 12:09 am
Gabriel wrote @ July 27th, 2013 at 6:08 am

gabrielle92 wrote @ August 7th, 2013 at 11:23 am

rumblefish wrote @ August 18th, 2013 at 12:12 pm

css wrote @ September 4th, 2013 at 3:49 pm
Gabriel wrote @ September 4th, 2013 at 9:06 pm

Nicky wrote @ September 23rd, 2013 at 8:43 am
Gabriel wrote @ September 23rd, 2013 at 11:12 am

Nicky wrote @ September 24th, 2013 at 6:28 am

Nicky wrote @ September 24th, 2013 at 6:29 am
Gabriel wrote @ September 24th, 2013 at 9:02 am
Jim wrote @ August 25th, 2014 at 10:09 am

vanessa wrote @ February 4th, 2015 at 5:54 am

Chay wrote @ March 21st, 2015 at 10:58 pm

Brenda in NC wrote @ October 27th, 2015 at 12:13 pm
Eamonn wrote @ December 7th, 2015 at 10:50 pm

Michael wrote @ December 18th, 2015 at 5:31 pm

Ignatius wrote @ October 7th, 2016 at 6:04 pm

Ignatius wrote @ October 7th, 2016 at 6:26 pm

Michael Keith wrote @ May 19th, 2017 at 8:02 pm

Waltezarcab wrote @ September 2nd, 2018 at 4:51 pm
ROFIS wrote @ November 2nd, 2018 at 11:07 pm
skessTom wrote @ July 31st, 2020 at 10:17 pm
Tearerory wrote @ August 1st, 2020 at 12:47 am