In the past, I have lived in out-of-control situations in which hundreds of little glistening eyes were staring from beneath the table where I was eating my dinner.

I would catch a few, and give them to my anoles, as if to show the others an example.  But that never quite worked ...

Thank God, I have moved up in the world, and that is a distant memory.

Even now, though, we get occasional visitors.  German cockroaches -- the smaller, more prolific type -- I crush on sight.  But I have developed a fondness for American cockroaches, the larger ones.  There was one who used to look down on us, every evening, from the top of the molding around a window, waggling cheerily its antennae.  I caught it in a cup, finally, and threw it outside.

We used to have cockroach problems and we had a 'homeopathic' remedy that I rather enjoyed.  Cockroaches may stand the test of time but they can not burp, and most pets can.  So we would put out milk-bottle caps full of a 50/50 mixture of powdered sugar and baking soda.  You can hide these in cabinets, on counters, or anywhere.  The roach eats the mixture, gets indigestion, and the best part is when you wake up the next day to find little exploded roaches on the floor!  Of course most of them will crawl out of sight before they explode so for every one you find you've probably killed five.  By the way, this will take time as you have to keep your home clean, sealed from new roach entry, and kill off any roaches that will later hatch from eggs in unknown places of your home.

When I lived in NYC years ago as a college student, way before I had thought to be concerned about the toxins in regular pesticides, boric acid was the only thing I found that actually worked.  I'd spread it all along the baseboards in the kitchen and bathroom, and in and around the kitchen garbage can, and the number of roaches went way down!  And my cat never showed the slightest interest in eating boric acid.

As a side note, when I was a kid my brother and I, for a time, had a pet cockroach named Lightning, who we let crawl up and down our arms (yuck, I say now!).  But then Lightning died, and we caught another, Lightning II, and I have to admit, I never felt the same way about Lightning II as I did about Lightning I.

RAID recently began advertising "Raid Earth Options," a plant based version of their product which they claim is just as effective. According to a review on epinions.com, the breakdown is

"Active Ingredients: Eugenol 0.50%, 2-Phenethyl Propionate 1.25%
 Inactive Ingredients: Other Ingredients: 98.25%, Petroleum Distillates"

So what dangers lurk here? If anyone knows, please post!

Anyway, since everyone is giving stories, I had a friend who, in his college days, had a roach problem. Then he caught one by placing a glass jar upside down over it. He left it there, telling it to tell its friends about him. He never had a cockroach problem after that.

By the way, to the first poster (caniscandida), your whole "crush on sight" approach doesn't really mesh well with your signature. You might want to think about changing one or the other.

Okay, so I can't necessarily say roaches don't feel pain--I'm pretty sure they do, although even I don't think they have complicated enough nervous systems to cause me quite as much concern as more complicated critters do.  

That said, while not discounting their suffering, I feel that there are certain creatures I do not feel the need to allow in my space.  I would rather put a roach outside than kill it, but if you live in New York, where it's just going to get back into someone's house right away and roaches are actually a real health hazard, that's just not realistic.  

I also make exceptions for flies on my horses.  I don't generally desire to kill flies, but when my horse's ears start bleeding from bites, I don't really get upset about killing flies to keep them from biting him.

True, it's not 100% logically sound, but neither am I willing to become a Jainist, sweeping the ground before me to avoid squashing a bug.  We must all draw our lines somewhere, and I think I can safely speak for CanisCandida as well as for myself when I say that a reasonable line is one between harm we can reasonably avoid and harm we can only displace.

Thanks, Sheepguy, for your comment.  I can see where you might suspect me of inconsistency.

And thanks, Willa, for your fine explanation.  Your attitudes are exactly my own.

Yes, cockroaches, mosquitoes and biting flies are our cousins.  But, like Willa, I am not a Jain, as much as I admire them.  Many supporters of animal rights observe a kind of sliding scale for determining what kind of consideration is owed to the different kinds of animals.  insects usually are not placed very highly.  That is not to say that their suffering and death are matters of indifference.  But the health and comfort of animals higher on the scale, including human beings of course, count for more.

Inasmuch as insects can feel pain, it seems that crushing them is about as painless a way of sending them to their heavenly reward as can be imagined.  All those pesticides and powders, by contrast, sound kind of nasty.  I am glad that I do not have to resort to using anything like that.  But I understand if people do choose to use them.  I am certainly in favor of in-door use of DDT to prevent malaria.

Persuading a captive cockroach to return to its tribe and tell them to stay away is a nice trick.  I shall keep it in mind.  As for my American cockroach, or "palmetto bug," it probably found refuge in the area where a nearby restaurant puts out its garbage.  Or else it found its way into an apartment building's basement.  Unlike German cockroaches, palmetto bugs seem to prefer to stay away from people and their dwellings.  It must have just taken a wrong turn when it ended up in our living room in the first place.

Umbra mentions making silica gel from sand.  Does anyone know how this is done?

My personal experience is that Borid Acid podwer and powdered sugar sure works for getting rid of ants.

SeeKeR

This discussion makes me recall my days in the Peace Corps, where teeming roach populations and (to be frank) crushing boredom forced us to invent ways of killing roaches. Sadly, for me it usually involved toxic chemicals from a can. But some people used sadistically satisfying methods that involved variations on the beer-bait theme and fire (kerosene lanterns).

Usually, when one reads about the Peace Corps, it comes across as a gloriously happy experience.  Nobody talks about the crushing boredom and the teeming roach populations.  Good heavens, what are the rest of us well-meaning innocents to think?!

Where were you in the Peace Corps?

was my post deleted about the roaches???? oops i didn't mean to offend i'm sorry