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Transcripts:
How To Locate & Eliminate German Roaches
Scott McGrath:
They hold onto their egg sacs on their body until they’re hatched, almost guaranteeing that they’re going to reproduce little babies.
Hey, everybody. It’s Scott McGrath again. We’re here with McGrath Pest Control. Every day we get phone calls from customers saying they see roaches in their kitchen, and they usually see them at nighttime. They get up, get some water, they walk around, and they see them scurry around. And they’re asking me, “What kind of roaches are these?” And typically, they’re not the American roaches you get from outside, but they’re more the bad roaches. They’re the German roaches. The German roaches are the ones you see in restaurants, hotels, apartments. Once you get them, it’s not real easy to get rid of them. Okay?
So let me give you some examples of what they feed on. German roaches feed on food and grease and gunk. Anything that’s in your kitchen that you may spill, that’s what they feed on. Now, one of the difference between the American and the German roach is the American roach, when they have an egg sac, they’re going to drop their egg sac and they’re going to keep walking along. And it may or may not hatch. Another roach may come and eat it. And so there’s no guarantee that these egg sacs are going to hatch. But with the German roach, they hold onto their egg sacs on their body until they’re hatched, almost guaranteeing that they’re going to reproduce little babies all the time. And they reproduce like this. They are very hardy. They love to hide different areas, and you’ll never really see a German roach just kind of scurry around in the daytime unless you’ve got a really, really bad problem.
So let’s look at some areas here in this kitchen that we, at McGrath Pest Control, we look for if you think that you have a German roach problem. So one of the areas that we’re going to look for is over here in this oven. Okay? Like I said… What did I say earlier? That they like to feed on food and grease and dirt. So a lot of times in this oven, you’re going to have spilled food. So they’ll hide in between here. They’re going to hide underneath here. So we have to look for evidence. We either look for the roaches themselves or we’re going to look for little black dots, which is kind of like their excrement that they leave behind. So we look here. We’re going to look underneath cabinets. Okay?
A lot of times they’ll be under wires. They’ll be up high under here. A lot of times you’ll see them in these springs right here. They’ll just kind of congregate here in the corner, and you’ll notice it because there’ll be tons of little roaches. There’ll be little black marks and droppings and stuff all in here. So that’s a good place for them to hide. They like small, dark areas. They’ll be in any little crack or crevice. Underneath here, they’ll be behind here.
Oh, they love appliances. And why do they like appliances? Because they’re hot and all the wires are in there. So they’ll get inside these appliances itself. Now, if that happens to you, the first thing I do, I’m going to ask you, how married are you to this appliance? Okay? Because once you get them in there, it’s super, super hard to get rid of them. I usually say, if you’re not married to it, throw it away. Let’s get you another one on there. Okay?
Now, another place that we find that they’ll hide a lot is going to be underneath cabinets like this. Okay? So we have to get down here, we get our flashlight, and we’re looking all through here for evidence. The bad thing about this is they’re not going to hide up in here. They’re going to hide inside this countertop right here. So what you have the granite, then you have plywood, and then you have your cabinet down here. They’ll be in between this granite and this plywood, okay?
Super hard to get rid of them. We have to try and flush them out. There’s a bunch of different sprays and baits and dust that we have to use in order to get them out. Okay? Other appliances like refrigerators, they love little areas like this to get into. They love all the little seals. They’ll hide in between there.
You’ll be amazed all the different areas that these German roaches will hide from. Okay? I’ve been doing this for 26 years. Pretty much every year I’ll find a new place that these roaches are hiding from. So it’s not real easy to get rid of, so you’re going to have to call a professional to come out and take care of it. So another thing I get all the time is they ask me, “Well, how did I get these German roaches?”
Well, they didn’t typically just crawl in from outside like American roaches will. You typically have to bring them in. So maybe you got a box of groceries with them in. Maybe you were in a storage unit with some stuff in it, and you brought it into your house and you didn’t know they had German roaches in it, because the next door neighbor had German roaches and they just kind of migrated over. So those are some different ways that you can get German roaches.
Now, once we identify them, once we get rid of them and we know how you got them, how do you keep them from coming back? Well, clean, clean, clean. German roaches is a sanitation issue. You have to get rid of their food source. Again, they feed on food and gunk and grease and spilled food. That’s what they feed on so you have to make sure you stay clean, you don’t have any more food source for them and then typically, you should be okay. You shouldn’t have any more issues or problems. All right?
If you do, you always want to call a professional. Call Scott McGrath here at McGrath Pest Control. We’ll come out free of charge, take a look at it, just kind of let you know what’s going on first, and then we’ll devise up a treatment plan that we will give to you that will help you eliminate these German roaches. Thank you.
