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Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Cockroaches in High Rise

I have no cockroaches. None at all. A friend of French nationality shrugged at the mention of cockroaches saying "If you're in Singapore, you learn to accept that they're everywhere."

I challenge that notion. There is no need to live alongside them.

We stayed for 14 years in our HDB flat. After a few years, we would find the odd cockroach in our air-conditioned bedroom. It didn't make sense because we never eat in the bedroom... and since the windows were kept closed and there is a good distance of clean floor between the kitchen (where cockroaches are mostly found) and our bedroom, I wondered how a cockroach could have appeared in our bedroom.

It didn't take long to figure out that they had crawled out of the pipes in the toilet. I tried a few solutions before I settled on a very simple and 100% effective one.

Hot boiling water.

I figured that it made sense to neutralise all the cockroach eggs before they hatched and one kettle of hot boiling water poured into every drainage pipe (from sink to shower trap) keeps the entire apartment cockroach free. Cockroaches it seems leave a trail scent that other cockroaches follow. As generation after generation of cockroaches hatch and walk the same trails, these scent trails become established cockroach highways. I believe that hot water destroys even the most tenuous cockroach pathway... and kills whatever eggs have been laid in your pipes before they hatch.

I am deathly afraid of cockroaches. When I see one, I don't see an insect. I see an equivalent of the alien in The Predator. Most people yell "Mouse!" and leap upon a table. Petunia yells "Cockroach!" and does a Spiderwoman onto the ceiling. Moving into this penthouse, I met one very aggressive cockroach which reared up on its hind legs and snapped its jaws audibly at me. I used up a whole canister of VSafe and spent the next hour and a half boiling water for every floor trap and sink hole.

Since then, every drainage hole gets sterilised once a week. No more cockroaches. Try it!

8 comments:

Rummi, the gardener. said...

YES! Identical scream at sightings!!

...followed scream for Kimi, who will kill The Creature. Then call for hubby, who will clear away the corpse.

Petunia Lee said...

Yeah... hubbies are good at that.

After they snigger snigger a good deal and then they pick it up by a feeler and dangle it in front of you.

Petunia Lee said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Open Kitchen Concept said...

Oh.. YUCKY cockroaches.. I have none in my place yet and we have stayed for about 2 years.. I'm not risking anything.. Hot water will go into those pipes this weekend.. Boiling water is also good for removing mildew..

Petunia Lee said...

OKC - Oh yes! That too!

Emily said...

I hate them too! Had one flying around behind me when I was young, and I screamed the house down!

JT said...

This particular hubby in turn leaves the cockroaches to the wifey and maid! When young, one of them (the cockroach not the wifey or maid!) ran over my foot, and have not recovered since. :p

Am more the lizard hunter (for which wifey and said maid deathly afraid in turn!) :)

Petunia Lee said...

Jude - LOL