Welcome to the ATX Pest Podcast, episode 12, cockroaches. Welcome back, hope. You’ve been listening to these podcasts every week. If you’re a first-time listener, welcome. Hope you like. Subscribe, share all that stuff you heard a million times. Be much appreciated.
I do these podcasts for a couple reasons. Number one, selfish reason. I do it for content for my website Help my business, of course, um. But I also do it for just as much reason of the selfish one is to help people. I like helping people, um, so it’s not a lot of things I can probably help people with as far as my skill set goes. Typically there’s a few things, but this is the main thing, so I can use my knowledge to give people some free advice at times, um. And then, of course, I’d be happy to have you call me, try our service out at my company. I’m local in Georgetown. Name of the company is EvoFoam Pest Control. If you mention this podcast, I’ll give you a very, very good discount, and I won’t. I’m not going to tell you what that is. You’ll have to call to find out, or email or text me. I’ll give you the info, how to get ahold of me at the end. Or, if you just want to call in email, whatever, ask question, glad to do that Free of charge. I’m busy, so bear with me. I’m getting back to you. I usually get back fairly quickly. Summertime’s a little harder though, so bear with me. Anyways, cockroaches is a topic today. Primarily, two species are the most common species we deal with in, you know, the Austin area here, um, in central Texas, I should say, is the most two. Two common species that we deal with is number one, the American cockroach, and number two, the German cockroach. Okay, American cockroaches would kind of start talking with. I’m not going to start anything, I’m not going to have any structure to this, I don’t care, so I’m just going to just keep talking.
Okay, cockroaches in general have what we call a gradual metamorphosis, which is their life cycle. Okay, like us, what do we do? We’re birthed and we start off as infants, then we become toddlers and then we become, you know, teenagers, whatnot, and then adults, right? So there’s a gradual process there of us, of our growth. So same thing for insects. Insects, arachnids, some have complete, which is a different one. We’ll get into the whole entomology and lifecycle thing. But the reality is is that they’re gradual, and what that means is they’ll start off in the egg stage. So obviously females will lay eggs, they will emerge from those eggs and then eventually, and then they’ll become nymphs. That’s the nymphal stage, and then they’re gonna kind of morph into an adult. That’s why they call it gradual. So what they’re missing in there is larval stage. Typically, if you have a complete metamorphosis, you’re going to be an egg and then you’re going to go into the larval stage, kind of like flies eggs and then you’ll see, or like mosquitoes are. The best example people usually understand is that they’ll lay eggs. Females lay a raft of eggs in, say, some stagnant water, right, and then they, and then they emerge as little wigglers. They call them that’s larval stage. So this is kind of eliminating and kind of passing up the larval stage.
Okay, and so American cockroaches, probably the most common that we encounter as homeowners, business owners, even warehouses, especially in further you get into actual city limits of Austin, it gets worse, and that’s because it’s older, it’s more developed, there’s a lot more people living there, more trash, older sewer systems. So there’s just a ton of American cockroaches in Austin area, more so than you’re going to find a little bit in suburbia. It’s a little bit more rural. You’re not going to find as many. Okay, so kind of like the same thing with rats. Same thing. So kind of like the same thing with rats, same thing. They typically will enter through a doorway in our homes that there’s a you know weather stripping compromise, their threshold compromise there and are through your grub corners of your garage because of the seal there and they cut that 45 degree. You can seal these things up with ventable mesh and there’s things to do to keep things sealed, and it’s the number one, most important thing when it comes to pest control, because that’s what it is, it’s controlling activity and what pest control companies like my company and all these other companies around here. We’re structural and that’s what people don’t understand. We are a structural pest control company. Okay, that doesn’t mean we’re going to treat your entire lawn every single time. Matter of fact, companies are telling you that and they’re going to be doing that. They probably are breaking the law, unless they’re fudging their records and what they’re what they’re actually treating for. Okay, because and I’m not going to go down a rabbit hole on products that we use, you know being chemicals, insecticides, right, um, but the labels state how it can be applied, where it can be applied and the amount that can be applied, how it can be applied, where it can be applied and the amount that can be applied, okay, and so you have to follow that. The label is the law Period.
Most products out there, insecticide-wise and I’m talking about a liquid application that you see them spraying out of a rig, spray rig out of a hose, from a hose reel, from their vehicle or a backpack sprayer that they’re going around your home most products can, can’t really be sprayed any more than well. The pyrethroid restriction, no more than three. The whole foundation are three foot up on the home. Windows and doors can use spot treatments, eaves you can do spot treatments, but as far as a barrier treatment goes, no more than three feet up and typically on average most products no more than really six feet out, seven feet out maybe. So there’s some ways to get around some things. Use some granules and now you can extend that barrier. We do the same. Of course we want to get a good kill and treat as much area around there. That’s needed. So it’s common in most companies. We’ll do that. So we’ll incorporate a lot of different techniques and equipment and products, different types of products, to accomplish all that. So, anyways, American cockroaches number one, probably most recognized and hated cockroach, because they’re encountered more than the German cockroach. German cockroaches are no bueno, okay, you don’t want either one of them in your home, but usually American cockroaches is just kind of a one-off and they’re actually classified as occasional invaders. Occasionally you’re going to see one slip inside your home because you have some type of sealing issue. So seal your house up, okay. Now, with German cockroaches they don’t come from outside and that is why pest control companies all alike don’t guarantee them. Don’t warranty them, okay, because there is nothing we can do to treat and prevent them. We’re not doing. They don’t come from the outside, mulch or lawn area or your trees outside. We can’t stop them, you know, from getting in because they’re not coming from there.
They are brought into the home just similar to, just like bedbugs, which kind of refer to them as hitchhikers. So typically German cockroaches are brought into the home and they infest the kitchen because that is the most ideal place they want to be Food, water and shelter. Get in your wall, voids, cabinets. There’s food there. They got the sink, they got dishwasher. There’s moisture there. They got the sink, they got dishwasher. There’s moisture there. It’s inside of a home is ideal. You know, ideal conditions, temperature wise. I mean, hey, they just hit the jackpot. They’re setting up shop and they’re not. They’re not gonna go anywhere and they’re just gonna continue to get worse and worse. Okay, so they’re typically brought in from used appliances is one of the number one ways I see it happen. Okay, um, you know, someone gave you or you wouldn’t purchase from a garage sale uh, an old, you know secondhand toaster oven refrigerator. You put a refrigerator in your garage. It’s not been multiple times I’ve seen that with customers. They got a all of a sudden they got German cockroaches and like, how the heck did I get this? And the first thing you always ask have you gotten any new appliances or used appliances or even new appliances? Sometimes you never. It can. I’ve seen it happen, not obviously as common, but they have.
The rent-a-centers are the worst and I’m not going to name names of the different rent-a-centers are the worst and I’m not going to name names of the different rent-a-centers, but when at my time in New York I actually serviced a chain of them and I’d go there and we had to do a bed bug preventative and so on all the showroom we’d find bed bugs and guess what behind it, where they had all the washers and dryers, all the washers and refrigerators and whatnot, dishwashers would have German cockroaches in them. And guess what would happen? Somebody would come rent those and they’d have them in the back. Well, guess what they did? They loaded up those used washers or dryers and stoves and whatnot refrigerators and they would go bring them to the next person that was going to rent them and they came with German roaches or bedbugs and couches and chairs and furniture in general and couches and chairs and furniture in general. So it just it’s. And I understand. You know sometimes you have to do what you have to do to. You know credit may not be good. You have to rent, you have to have couches, you got to have something to sit on, you got to have, you know, something to keep your food cool. I understand, but do your due diligence and really inspect that and question them and they’re gonna say, oh, yeah, yeah, well, we, you know, we do. We have pest control. Usually that’s a lie, because when they did the bed bug preventative they’d be with some product called sterifab and they would be spraying that in the back. But that’s all they would be doing. And, yeah, if you contacted one directly, sprayed them it was gonna kill them, but it had, did no residual, it did nothing for any further protection and they’re not thorough enough and activities have been missed. So you know, bring that into someone’s home and over time and if estate this good infestation gets worse, okay. So stay away from them. If you can or really inspect it before it gets into your home when they come to deliver it, it’s very important. So they’re hitchhikers, so that’s always a special service. We do a my company, we do a very extensive what we call flush-out treatment. We’re flushing them out of wall voids, taking electrical covers off, getting inside the walls, pulling out refrigerators, getting inside the back of motors and then taking out dishwashers. I mean, you have to get behind things. You got to get down on your hands and knees and work, so we do that. I’m outside, by the way, If you hear some noises, there’s some loud birds just kind of made me turn around and look. So if you hear any weird noises going, I’m actually outside, because it’s actually nice out and not so hot at the moment. So I figured I’d walk around out here and do this episode. So, anyways, lost my train of thought Doesn’t matter, we’re just going to keep talking lost. My train of thought doesn’t matter, we’re just gonna keep talking. So with German cockroaches it takes a special treatment. All right, I remember that was saying so.
We do what we call flush out service. On their initial service, we use a HEPA vacuum to vacuum up as much as we can as we flush them out of their hiding places, take off all electrical covers, dust and wall boards. You know, just very, very thorough. So we’ll spend a lot of time in this. Service is what a company should be doing. There’s other ways of skin the cat. Some people have their different protocols. I just I this is just the best way that I have found over my almost 18 years doing this and I’ve been at different companies that do it differently. I took all the good things and came up with my own protocol and, yeah, this is what I believe in. And then we’ll come back and do follow-ups and different baiting techniques and there’s a good bait dust out there that we utilize now and we get rid of them. Period a couple treatments max, they’re gone. We’re very transparent on price. It’s not cheap. You can expect to spend anywhere from three to six hundred dollars plus. It just depends for German cockroaches it’s not. It’s not cheap. It just really depends on how bad of an infestation and and so that tells you right there. The worst the infestation, obviously, the more money. So if you suspect you have them, you better call and do something about it right away, because if you wait it’s gonna cost you a lot more money. Okay, so if you wait it’s gonna cost you a lot more money. Okay. So if you suspect you have German cockroaches a lot, most companies, like like my company, will do some free inspections, give you a free quote. But if you just see you know a bug, you’re not sure what it is, do a Google search, image search on it at least, or send a picture to that company. Please don’t waste their time. We have a lot of people waste their time, which you know it costs a lot of money just to go to someone’s house, okay. So oftentimes when people suspect that it’s a great tool, take a clear picture of them, usually put like a nickel or a dime or a quarter next to it, so we can get a reference of size. That’s always a huge. They’ll appreciate that.
I know I do Anytime I ID things. I’m an associate certified entomologist, so a lot of people will send me things at different companies. At times I don’t know everything, but sometimes I have to go looking things up and figure things out. There’s so many bugs um out there, different species out there, that I have to, you know, take some time researching um, and if I and and if I don’t know something, then I got to call someone smarter than me, okay, and that happens. So no one knows everything, and sometimes some when you get in those different, everything and sometimes when you get in those different I mentioned this before when you get in those different stages, like from the egg to the nymphal stage, and then we have instars and things of that nature, meaning they’re kind of progressing in age and like shedding their exoskeletons and growing, progressing in age and like shutting their exoskeletons and growing, so at different stages of their growth. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to get an ID on them. You can post a question, you can pose the question on a animal on a pest control forum or member, you know group on Facebook and these are all business owners and you’ll get five different opinions on on one picture. You know sad, but you know it. It is what it is okay, it’s difficult, it’s very difficult. So, um, at times, okay, and that’s the point too sometimes different cockroaches can be mistaken um and for for one another. Um, and just because of of going through that, different stages. Now, if you had a, an adult German and American cockroach side by side, there’s no, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna know mistake one for the other. That’s not going to happen. If you are, you’re an idiot. If I’m not speaking, if you’re a pest control so-called professional, okay, they should definitely be able to distinguish the two, okay. So that’s a little bit about them. American cockroaches tips okay, how do I prevent them? Because they come from outside. Well, leaf debris is a big one. Harbridge area. You don’t want a bunch of brush, you want a bunch of clutter. You don’t want to keep the leaf debris out there, so you don’t want to clog gutters. You know, keep your, keep your landscape clean, and it’ll prevent so many other issues too. So that’s seal up your home, have pest control. It’s really all you can do, okay, and and that will be enough.
Now you might have a one-off once in a blue moon, got an occasional invader just because you see one. Don’t freak out, okay, if you’re seeing all different sizes and they’re in your kitchen or your got an occasional invader just because you see one. Don’t freak out, okay. If you’re seeing all different sizes and they’re in your kitchen or your bathroom in the high moisture areas like that, there’s a very good possibility that they’re Germans, okay, not to say they couldn’t be an American or another species. We see once in a while an Oriental, just very rare around here actually. We don’t see them often. But primarily, if you see all the different sizes through their lifecycle and you see many of them and you’re seeing them late at night and turn the lights on or early in the morning, you probably have German cockroaches. You need to call someone immediately. It’s not something to procrastinate on, because you will end up spending a lot more the more weeks that go by. That dollar ticker is going up, okay. So call right away, send a picture. I’m available and so you can send me an email to Damian D-A-M-I-A-N at evofoampest.com, and that’s E-V-O-F-O-A-M-P-E-S-T. So, damian@evofoampest.com, or you can give me a call. I’m available to speak in the office Monday through Friday, eight to five, 512-588-2998. And that’s my company. It’s called Evo Foam Pest Control. Like I said, if you need some help. I’m here to help you. Want a couple questions answered free of charge? I won’t charge you a dime, so give me a call.
Look forward to speaking with you and I really appreciate you tuning in. Please like, subscribe, share all that good stuff again. Um, it’ll, it’s. It’s much appreciated. Enjoy doing these. I’d like to continue to do these, but I’m only going to do them if it’s benefiting some folks. It’s okay if a lot of people don’t listen to this. I do it for my content too, but I would hope to start getting a little bit of a following. I would hope to start getting a little bit of a following, and it takes time for people to hear these and stumble upon these. So hopefully I don’t bore you to death. I’m trying to be a little bit more natural as I speak with these as weeks go by, so I’ll get a little wild down the road. So stay tuned. Appreciate you. Y’all be good.
