Sunday evening... a nice, quiet evening in Casa Legend. I was reading A dance with Dragons*, in my Kindle reader. My wife was buying stuff on Taobao with her iPad. Daughter sleeping in her room.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps. Coming from the wall. A shadow fell over my book! I looked up... and there it was... a cockroach. Body, more than two centimeters. Eyes, beady and hungry.
Not willing to destroy the wall by leaving it splattered with blood and entrails, I grabbed the vacuum cleaner from the supplies room (yes, my Chinese wife knows and understands the joke, and even told it once in English class) and chased it across the wall, until it was sucked away, never to be seen again.
Later that evening, it's slightly smaller brother (or sister?) looked at me from behind the toilet bowl when I was emptying my bladder. And yesterday, yet another one scurried across the floor and disappeared under a cupboard.

The problem is clear. Either they leave, or they will be killed. But how best to get rid of them? And, in a eco-friendly matter - not only because I respect nature (with the exception of cockroaches and mosquitos) but also because I have a very curious one-year old daughter crawling around the apartment, who will put everthing she finds in her mouth as one-year-olds are known to do. So open patches of poison are out of the question.
The apartment itself is clean (to a Dutch standard!) and there is no food left in the open.


* A great series of books, GRRM's Song Of Ice And Fire, but it gets a bit tiresome that even in the narrative he always uses archaic words when it's not necessary. "The Wildlings are outside", Mr GRRM. Not, "The Wildlings are without". A babe is a good-looking young, yet of legal age, lady. And "four-and-twenty" is correct in Dutch, but in English it's "twenty-four".

Nuke it from orbit?

That *may* damage the walls, so if there's another method...

Can't help you, but the fact that it is an apartment doesn't sound good. Even if you are clean, your neighbors probably aren't and are likely the source of the initial problem.

If you find a way to kill them, do let us know though. As I understand they are very difficult to remove...

Diatomaceous earth applied as a fine powder works very well to eliminate cockroaches as long as it remains in place and dry. Diatomaceous earth is harmless to humans and feels like talcum powder. Most insects, including bed bugs, are vulnerable to it.

Its your surrounding that are causing the invasion. No stopping them without Flamethrowers.

Never forget the day I took my son who 3 at the time down to a Ben Franklin Store Downtown.
Steam heat, Cockroaches the size of mice. Took him downstairs to check out the toys and he
say`s "Dad, Look a mouse". look over and see that Cockroach the size of a mouse and give it
kick, its spins down the aisle onto its back and like a turtle, could not flip back over.
So I took him for a closer look and he was ready to try pick it up. Took a box off the shelf
quickly and smashed him. He was upset about it. Told him, that was no mouse, just a BUG. He
was happy with that. We later learned he needed glasses.

It's the only way to be sure

Fresh bay leaves apparently work great with keeping them away. Might be a little expensive out of Cityshop, can't remember...

Here in HK, I'm blessed with a full family of geckos sharing the apartment with us. They do a fantastic job.

Cheers,
Slug

Thanks for the tip KrazikanuK, will look into that (although I'm a bit scared of leaving that around the house... like I said, daughter dear is extremely curious and puts everything she finds in her mouth).

Paul, if I damage the wall, the only thing that is sure is that #1 spousal unit will make me sleep on the couch. In the park. At -25°C.

Sluggish, sounds interesting as well, the bay leaves. I think I saw a large bag for only a few kuai at the Metro recently. And a gecko in the house doesn't sound too bad as well - they also eat mosquito's, right?

1-A box of wooden strike anywhere matches
2-Air rifle (bb gun).
Pump, drop the match down the barrel tip facing out, have fun.

Sorry, I couldn't resist playing along with Peally's Aliens quote...

#17:
Aliens quotes..

If you can't nuke it from orbit, you're going to have to aim for the nerve stem...

Yep, geckos also eat mossies, they gorge on them. And smart little fellows too, they hang under the lampshades at night !

Found this.
http://bugasalt.com/

Surprised nobody got one yet on SimHQ yet, you could be the first.

Cheers,
Slug

Those are going to be pretty big geckos to
eat 2cm roaches. Much bigger than the ones
I watched eating moths around their favourite
lamp on the ceiling in my room in Nicaragua
this spring.

If you've got roaches, you've got ways for them
to get in. I would tend to go for a caulking
gun full of tough silicone or acrylic sealant,
and plug every seam and hole in the apartment.
Add seals around the external doors. Then you
will only have to deal with ones that are living
in your goods and furnishings, which can be
exterminated in a variety of ways, such as
fumigating items in a large plastic bag filled
with CO2 for 24 hours. This might have to be
repeated in a month or two to get any that have
hatched from eggs in the interim. This process
will kill anything, so you may get rid of pests
you didn't know you had.

I'm sorry, I'm just laughing at the relation of the words "big" and "2 cm". Around here, that's an ant.
Roaches in FL are usually 2-3" or a bit more, you can do the math conversion.




The Jedi Master

I think there's a poisonous spider native originally to Australia which really likes cockroaches. You might want to introduce a pair or two to your apartment building so they can thrive on the meals available.

A bottle of Jays Fluid down the drain keeps my cockroaches at bay for a whole season.

The geckos have trouble with some of the larger cockroaches. I recommend iguanas.

Actually, I have that salt shotgun.

Hire professionals, or better have your landlord hire professionals. As Flogger rightly points out, it has to be the entire building that's treated and your landlord may want to poke about your neighbors to see that they aren't leaving too many old pizza boxes and nasty dishes around (like mice and rats, there will pretty much *always* be roaches about, but you only really see them when they are living the bug equivalent of the high life). There may be no way around using dangerous poisons, but there are poisons which quickly decay and are relatively eco-friendly (there's a whole eco-friendly extermination industry, though that could be more advertising than anything else).

Quite simply, nothing else will work. They are tenacious. Nuking from orbit isn't even likely to be effective.

Had to deal with cockroaches a few times when living in the barracks in TX and AC went out and open windows let them in, and also then in college renting cheap apartments:

1. Seal whatever is letting them in or attracting them if you can find it
2. Use Cockroach Traps to kill the ones that are in