THE ROACHES

THE ROACHES

Roaches sometimes become extremely abundant in houses, restaurants, and stores. They destroy or contaminate food. They may leave an offensive odor, excretions, and disease or food-poisoning organisms on dishes and cooking utensils. Several roach eggs are enclosed in each egg capsule from which the young roaches escape "hen the eggs hatch. The young are very small at first but otherwise look very much like the adults, except that they do not have wings.

Adults of the German cockroaches and brown-banded roaches are about one-half inch long. There are two or three generations a year in houses and other warm places. They live mostly inside buildings and are usually troublesome right in the area where they develop, as in the kitchen or bathroom. The brown-banded roach may also live all through the house. It will be found on the under side of tables, chairs, and upholstered furniture, behind pictures on the wall, or inside television and radio cabinets, bookcases, desks, dressers, and linen closets.

Adults of the American and oriental cockroaches are 1 1/4 to 2 inches long. They complete one generation in about a year. In warm climates they can live outdoors the year around, inhabiting barns, outbuildings, rubbish piles, and other places where they can hide. They constantly invade homes from these sources. In colder climates they cannot survive the winter outside, but continue to grow and be active during cold weather in heated buildings. These roaches usually do not develop in kitchens or the living portions of homes. They may wander there during the night when they are foraging, but they come from such places as basements, furnace rooms, storage areas, steam tunnels, sewers, alleys, yards, or around foundations and porches. During the day most of them go back to the place in which they developed.

Control: A 2 percent chlordane spray is effective and practical for use under ordinary conditions. It may be sprayed or applied with a small paint brush to the proper surfaces. It will remain effective for several weeks. Chlordane powder, DDT spray or powder, pyrethrum spray or powder, sodium fluoride powder, and phosphorus paste have varying degrees of effectiveness.

To control roaches satisfactorily, it is necessary to get the insecticide into the places where they hide or develop, as well as on surfaces where they will walk when they wander around at night. It is important therefore to know which kind of roach is involved, because of the different habits of the various species.

Good housekeeping and thorough sanitation are helpful in controlling roaches by reducing the available food supply, although an infestation may become established in the cleanest of houses.