Bugs in the Building

The Clean kitchen

I have finally got our kitchen put back together. We had a problem in our building that became evident last month when I killed a small bug that I saw running along the backsplash of the counter. It was …a cockroach! That’s not good!

Cleanliness is next to …impossible!

The common cockroach is almost universally associated in people’s minds with filthy conditions, garbage and squalor. But roaches can be introduced into a clean home as well, riding inside of second-hand housewares, yard/patio furniture brought inside for whatever reason, camping gear, etc. ‘Rummage sale’ items of furniture are very bad for this.

-Even from empty cardboard boxes brought home from your local grocery to be repurposed for say, moving or storage, are all highly suspect. Roaches are everywhere. They are one of the most successful species of life and earliest living organisms on the planet. Wherever you are, they can be as well.

I read once that spiders are also everywhere and that no matter where you are, -even right now sitting in your computer chair reading this, you are never farther than six feet from a spider! No matter where you go! Think about that for a minute… six feet away (or closer!)

Anyway, I would find & kill a second roach, and my wife would kill one and over the next week or so she said that she had seen two more that escaped. This was getting out of hand.

Time to report and get help

As I was leaving our apartment the other morning, I heard the Superintendent’s distinctive voice from the other end of the hall, so I decided to chat him up about our recent discovery. He was talking with …a pest control worker! This pest control worker had just finished a spray-job in the apartment next to ours and was ‘reporting back’ on the finished deed.

I relayed my tale, and he said that the apartment next to ours had a new tenant of just over one month, and that they apparently had inadvertently introduced cockroaches. Their apartment was the source. Their apartment had just been ‘sprayed’ or ‘treated’ I guess is the more “pc” term.

Adamant that this pest situation gets under control fully and completely, the Super put me down for the following week for the same procedure. He mentioned that another building down by the waterfront had a building-wide infestation over this summer and that the entire building had to be ‘treated’. Yikes! Best to stop this infestation now, before it spreads.

So my weekend was all about getting EVERYTHING out of our kitchen; all foodstuffs, cooking vessels and such. What couldn’t be removed needed to be covered up. I thought it would be easier to just remove everything and put in into the computer room, so that is what I did.

It took me two days to empty the kitchen, and the bathroom (they wanted to spray in there, too.) When both the kitchen and bathroom were completely emptied, I started to scrub everything. I wanted to wash all the cupboards, walls, and ceiling if I could reach it, countertops, floor, -everything. While our apartment would be considered ‘fairly clean’ at any particular time, it could always benefit from a vacuuming and mopping. It had been over six months since my last cleaning binge that moved the refrigerator and stove out to sweep, mop, strip & wax the entire ceramic tile floor. Still, there were dustballs under there again, some unidentifiable hard yellow-orange goop, grains of something (sugar, or salt?) and of course, a few French Fries.

–What is it with French Fries getting under the stove and refrigerator, anyway? Is it some universal constant that there are French Fries under the stove? And a gym sock? Nevermind…

Well, the pest control guy came on the appointed day and time and was ready to begin. I had to leave for four hours minimum, so I left and wandered the neighborhood for about two hours. When I picked my son up from his kindergarten class we drove down to my in-law’s home for the remainder of the afternoon. It seemed to be such a relief that the apartment was being treated and that we’d have no more trouble after today.

A parting word of advice

We returned to a slightly smelly but (hopefully) bug-free & immune apartment. I re-washed the cupboard surfaces to accommodate the plates and foodstuff to be stored safely again. It’s taken me several days to get things back in order. I do not want to ever have to go through this, ever again.

Some advice, inspect the recycled boxes coming into your home thoroughly. Be mindful of second-hand furniture; -it could contain unwanted insect interlopers. If you store clothing in public lockers (like at the gym, etc), be sure to ’shake out’ your clothes before putting them back on!

And the obvious obligatory advice, -if your slightly weird neighbor guy wants to start raising cockroaches in some breeding colony in his apartment for fun & profit or because he thinks it’s cool, you tell him NO! You shut ’im down! You do not want these pesty buggers in your building!

I’d rather suck brown dental floss than have to go through this again! It was a royal pain in the you-know-where to strip-down the entire kitchen and move everything into a secure room and then have to re-wash everything prior to re-installing. You do NOT want to have to go through the trouble and bother we went experienced.