15 hours ago, Alpha84 said:

I rarely ever see roaches in my gaff, but I just encountered a massive unit scurrying across the floor in my flat. I gave it an absolutely savage whack with an empty 1 litre tetra pack drink bottle that was sitting on the counter. Just grabbed the closest thing within reach because I did not want to give the little charmer time to pull a Houdini and vanish into another dimension. Proper full blooded hit. Guts splattered across the floor and all over the side of the container. Absolute homicide looking scene from a single blow. I thought there was no possible way that thing was surviving it.

So I sauntered off (thinking it had already checked out) to grab some paper towel to pick it up and send it on its final voyage down the bog.

But when I turned back around, the little ba*tard was actually starting to scurry away again, and at a surprisingly decent clip as well. Honestly, the determination was almost admirable. But I nabbed him quickly and wrangled him over to the bowl in a Bangkok minute. I was even more shocked to see the filthy little mutant trying to climb back out after I dropped him in the porcelain void. He was truly giving it a 12 round effort, no match for the big flush though.

I honestly do not understand it. How was that nasty little oozing sack of guts still operational when half its internal organs appeared to be outside its body? At this point I am convinced roaches are basically tiny armoured apocalypse survival creatures. No doubt they will make it through and thrive in the dystopia following a thermonuclear annihilation of the planet while the rest of us are reduced to radioactive slime.

They are never alone so if you saw 1 there are more hiding out somewhere close by

2 hours ago, Dan O said:

They are never alone so if you saw 1 there are more hiding out somewhere close by

As long as he didn't get a chance to use his sat phone to transmit any GPS coordinates before he got flushed then hopefully his mates wont come looking for him. Otherwise, you are right, I could be in grave danger.

These days I may consider that it's those big rats causing more havoc then the roaches.

2 hours ago, Jim Blue said:

Alpha there have been instances when the rope

broke or the gun failed and the condened man is

usually pardoned.

You are a hard ass !

You have a point, but now you got me thinking. We don't actually know what his true fate was since I only whacked him once. And he was still scrambling when I dumped him in the crapper. If hes a decent swimmer, he just might have survived the whole ordeal. He might have even made home in time for dinner with the missus!

1 minute ago, Alpha84 said:

You have a point, but now you got me thinking. We don't actually know what his true fate was since I only whacked him once. And he was still scrambling when I dumped him in the crapper. If hes a decent swimmer, he just might have survived the whole ordeal. He might have even made home in time for dinner with the missus!

I fancy the missus would have eaten him before he even pulled up his chair to the table........................

Right, now I am officially spooked and I could not even make this up.

After never seeing roaches of this magnitude in my hovel, I just walked out into the dining area again and there was another repulsive looking six legged mo-fo lying on the floor in almost the exact same spot as the first one.

But this one was different. He was already on his back, legs kicking rapidly in the air, head bobbing from side to side, as if he had already accepted his fate and was preparing to cross over into the miserable cockroach afterlife.

So instead of performing instant gut removal surgery on him like I did to his brother, I grabbed a bit of hard paper packaging from a 100 gram dark chocolate bar sitting on the table, scooped him up while his nasty little legs were still twitching away, and marched him straight over to the shi*ter so he could be reunited with his mate in the sewer kingdom below. Flushed him hard, just like his comrade. Job done.

But seriously, how does this even happen? Going from almost never seeing one, to now two sickening specimens appearing in nearly the exact same location within hours of each other?

I am now wondering if the first one managed to radio for backup just before the tetra pack incident. And where does this all end?

Edited May 18May 18 by Alpha84

23 hours ago, Nemises said:

Nearly got taken out by a roach once—true story 😅

Saw it on the living room wall at about head height, just chilling like it owned the place 🪳 I grabbed the spray, went in slow and tactical, thinking I had the upper hand… full confidence, zero fear 😎

Got within range, ready to unleash justice—and the little menace launched itself straight into my face like it had been waiting for the perfect moment 😳 Proper kamikaze stuff 💥

Next thing I know I’m going backwards, off balance, and my head narrowly misses the coffee table on the way down 🪑😬

And let us not forget some are seriously large- one crossed our lounge here in UT last night- I have ridden horses that were smaller!

Rumour has it that one day roaches will rule the world.

On 5/18/2026 at 10:54 AM, Nemises said:

Pretty sure if the planet gets nuked, the only things left will be Keith Richards 🎸, Nokia 3310s 📱 and your flatmate from the kitchen floor

It's hard to believe but I have witnessed with my own eys a large cockroach surviving a 2 minute blast in a microwave oven so they surely are hardy.

On 5/18/2026 at 7:54 AM, Nemises said:

Pretty sure if the planet gets nuked, the only things left will be Keith Richards 🎸, Nokia 3310s 📱 and your flatmate from the kitchen floor

Comment of the week..........................

5 hours ago, Alpha84 said:

Right, now I am officially spooked and I could not even make this up.

After never seeing roaches of this magnitude in my hovel, I just walked out into the dining area again and there was another repulsive looking six legged mo-fo lying on the floor in almost the exact same spot as the first one.

But this one was different. He was already on his back, legs kicking rapidly in the air, head bobbing from side to side, as if he had already accepted his fate and was preparing to cross over into the miserable cockroach afterlife.

So instead of performing instant gut removal surgery on him like I did to his brother, I grabbed a bit of hard paper packaging from a 100 gram dark chocolate bar sitting on the table, scooped him up while his nasty little legs were still twitching away, and marched him straight over to the shi*ter so he could be reunited with his mate in the sewer kingdom below. Flushed him hard, just like his comrade. Job done.

But seriously, how does this even happen? Going from almost never seeing one, to now two sickening specimens appearing in nearly the exact same location within hours of each other?

I am now wondering if the first one managed to radio for backup just before the tetra pack incident. And where does this all end?

Likely a victim of a poison sprayed out in the past, either from you or a neighbor.

21 hours ago, 3NUMBAS said:

In china they bread em for making roach toothpaste and other products

They eat anything in China.

I occasionally find them in our bathroom. I've sealed every gap & hole I can find .. and the only thing left is the shower and sink drain. Do these little bastard crawl up the drain pipes? I'm on the 10th floor.

2 minutes ago, GiveMeAColdOne said:

I occasionally find them in our bathroom. I've sealed every gap & hole I can find .. and the only thing left is the shower and sink drain. Do these little bastard crawl up the drain pipes? I'm on the 10th floor.

absolutely, and abseil down from above

You found one in the same place because they put out a pheromone that attracts others...it's like saying"the food's here, fellas".

I once stayed in a hotel that had gaps under the doors which cockroaches got through. One morning I woke up to find my favourite shirt, which I had draped over a chair because it was sweaty, had a hole over 1 cm wide eaten in it. Bastards !

In another place I was rudely woken in about a hundredth of a second by a cocky giving my testicles a very sharp nip. Death to all cockroaches !

Edited May 19May 19 by Hervey Bay

Thank you for your great posts...

@FolkGuitar - Boric Acid powder.

@Alpha84 - The scientific answer from AI.

@Nemises - Pretty sure roaches don’t require a personality assessment...

This thread is both entertaining and informative. It would be great to see more discussions like this - what a single roach can do!

On 5/18/2026 at 8:27 AM, Alpha84 said:

I'm leaving you today

Goodbye

Goodbye

Goodbye

Goodbye all you people

There's nothing you can say

To make me change my mind

Goodbye

[Groucho Marx]
Hello, I must be going
I cannot stay, I came to say, "I must be going"
I'm glad I came but just the same I must be going

On 5/18/2026 at 3:04 AM, FolkGuitar said:

2. The Japanese method is to make little 'cookies' with the Boric Acid, and if you buy it in a Japanese pharmacy, they will give you a printed recipe sheet. Basically, it's just grated onion, potato, and a little flour, plus the Boric Acid, shaped into cookies, baked at a low temp just to harden them, then placed behind, under, and around areas that roaches might like to travel!
You will never see another roach!

Edited yesterday at 03:05 AM1 day by FolkGuitar

Thanks for the pointers in your post. I did an internet search "Boric acid for roaches". Plenty of results with different solutions, some ready made products and some home made recipes. Apparently some roaches may not be attracted to some of the methods as much as others, so to try different approaches if the problem persists.

7 hours ago, fredwiggy said:

Likely a victim of a poison sprayed out in the past, either from you or a neighbor.

Good point. Perhaps someone had poisoned them both. Maybe that is why the first one was just sitting there out in the open when I smashed it. The second one may have been feeling the effects of the poisoning even worse than the first, which would explain why it was lying on its back by the time I spotted it.

5 hours ago, LarryLEB said:

[Groucho Marx]
Hello, I must be going
I cannot stay, I came to say, "I must be going"
I'm glad I came but just the same I must be going

Nice! Also, you may not have realized it, but the post I was responding to had said "goodbye cruel world" which was a short song by Pink Floyd from their album The Wall. What I posted were those song lyrics.

6 hours ago, Hervey Bay said:

You found one in the same place because they put out a pheromone that attracts others...it's like saying"the food's here, fellas".

Thanks. That makes perfect sense. And maybe they both crawled out from the same nest after someone had poisoned them both. So far, I have not seen any more, and it has been about 12 hours since the last one. But, I am on high alert now. Hopefully there will not be any others.