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Roaches and breaking my lease
Rethius
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi. My girlfriend and I moved into a new place last April. A duplex, pretty close to work. Ever since we got here, my allergies have been insane.
My old neighbors were pretty filthy, which eventually got them kicked out. My landlord had to drop a few grand to fix their side of the house, and at one point a couple months ago had to call an exterminator for Roaches. The guy did our place too, but said it was a minor infestation and no big deal. I never saw one until tonight.
Little bastard was crawling in my fridge. We are tidy people, don't leave food out, no clutter or leaks. This is the only one I've seen, but I am fucking revolted. Like, can't sleep disgusted.
My questions:
1. Am I overreacting? One bug, and I'm already in war mode. Is it as bad as I think it is? I've heard that if you see one, there's a hundred you don't see.
2. Is there really any hope in fixing this? I only have control over my half of the duplex, and I am not willing to live with these fucking things.
3. If we do break the lease and find a new place, will we take them with us by accident? How can I make sure they don't follow us in a box, etc? They have eggs or anything? Should I just burn it all?
I will call my landlord in the morning, but I have a feeling I will need to go. It just doesn't feel like this is a game I'm willing to play. Thanks for your time.
My old neighbors were pretty filthy, which eventually got them kicked out. My landlord had to drop a few grand to fix their side of the house, and at one point a couple months ago had to call an exterminator for Roaches. The guy did our place too, but said it was a minor infestation and no big deal. I never saw one until tonight.
Little bastard was crawling in my fridge. We are tidy people, don't leave food out, no clutter or leaks. This is the only one I've seen, but I am fucking revolted. Like, can't sleep disgusted.
My questions:
1. Am I overreacting? One bug, and I'm already in war mode. Is it as bad as I think it is? I've heard that if you see one, there's a hundred you don't see.
2. Is there really any hope in fixing this? I only have control over my half of the duplex, and I am not willing to live with these fucking things.
3. If we do break the lease and find a new place, will we take them with us by accident? How can I make sure they don't follow us in a box, etc? They have eggs or anything? Should I just burn it all?
I will call my landlord in the morning, but I have a feeling I will need to go. It just doesn't feel like this is a game I'm willing to play. Thanks for your time.
Rethius on
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Go buy some poison bait dispensers. Stick them under your sink / behind your fridge. A lot of people say the gel bait works even better. It's more expensive, but if you're thinking about wasting hundreds by breaking your lease it's probably worth it to you.
Call your landlord and ask him to send the exterminator out again. But when he asks how many you've seen running around, don't be surprised if he laughs at you when you say one.
There was ONE BUG, and you're going to call your landlord about it?
When we were initially shown round the place there were a lot of boxes everywhere, art on the walls and pots and other cooking utensils etc in the kitchen. The guy joked that we were getting all this for free but we assumed it would all be gone when we moved in. One room was full of glass tanks, all empty except for gravel and miscellaneous plants and such. The guy told us the previous owner had been into aquaria but it had all been taken by a pet store for safe-keeping.
We took the place but were surprised to see all the boxes still there when we got the keys. We were actually pretty annoyed. Well my X was annoyed but it didn't take much to annoy her. Why she's my X, I guess. But she had a point. We thought that with all this stuff still here the previous owner was bound to show up and give us a hard time.
Anyway, about three days after moving in we were watching TV when my X starts freaking out, curls everything in and attaches herself to me like a limpet mine. She thought she saw a huge spider behind the TV. I, bravely, go and investigate.
Obviously it wasn't a spider.
It was a scorpion.
I freaked out. Big time.
I hopped up on the sofa, terrified I was going to get stung. My X grabs her shoe off the floor and tells me to whack the scorpion. I was all yeah right but she was screaming at me to do it.
By now I realise that it's probably too cold for the scorpion because it's just sitting there. I thought it was dead but it moved just enough. I start to think we should catch it somehow but she's still telling me to hit it with the shoe and I'm ashamed to say I did. I smacked it right in the head.
And this is what still gives me nightmares. Nah not really but I do think about it and it freaks me out a little. When I killed it I thought it exploded but it was a bunch of baby scorpions dashing off in every direction. There were like a million of them on its back and they scattered good.
My X had gotten brave and was stamping on them after she put on her other shoe but I said they might still sting her other bare foot and she got back on the sofa pretty quick.
She went to live with her folks for the next six months, I got a hell of a deal on the rent, and was scooping up dead scorpion babies for a week of Fridays. I figure they died of starvation which still makes me kinda sad. The major downside was that I probably would have broken up with my X quicker if we'd had to live together. So thanks for that, scorpion.
Roaches? Puhlease. Come the apocalypse they will inherit the Earth. Respect your future roach overlords.
But yeah, you definitely do want to find out where the point of entry to your fridge was and take care of that. Even if the roach was an isolated incident, you might be leaking cold air and wasting energy.
barney - o_O A fucking scorpion? You're a tougher man than I am for hanging in there for that episode.
Anyway, I've checked a few pest removal sites, and it says we need to focus on the lining on the walls, etc. So, for now, step one is to clean under the fridge and confront whatever horrors are lurking there, step two is to get some bait and shit out to kill any more that are lurking.
Thanks again, appreciate all your responses.
This is one of the worse things I've ever heard. I probably would've followed your gf's lead and moved far, far away.
If you don't have kids/pets, I spray a thing called Home Defense around the outside of my place and even down in like under the sink, though I wouldn't use it if you had dishes or pans down there to soak it up. It stops bugs period, for months and months.
But yeah, I think you have to fully expect to every few months find a roach, or ant, or spider, or something. They can get in around doors, where pipes come in, etc.
I'm currently dealing with some ants, they've been eating up poison for 3 weeks now and nothing. They disappear every few days and I think I've won, then a bunch are back eating it up. There's way too many big holes into the walls under the sink/stove/cupboards, so I haven't sprayed a bunch yet.
If this is the first bug you've seen since April, its entirely possible it came from outside the house, and is no problem at all. It just happens to be the time of year you would expect to see bugs finding their way inside. Also there are many varieties of roaches, and not all of them are as infestuous as others.
There may be nothing to fix- but I will entertain the possibility that it is a problem to better answer that question - If he isn't having this done already- see if your landlord is willing to have the house sprayed on a regular basis - a lot of rentals spray the kitchen and baseboards once a month or so, which helps keep the bugs out.
And, finally, yes, it is possible to bring the bastards with you. It can be hard not to. If the problem is big enough to warrant finding a new place (and really, for me to consider that an option, it would need to be a huge problem) there is so much furniture - its hard not to bring a few with you, and then you've got the same problem in a new place.
All that said - its perfectly safe to ignore the first one. Especially in the fall- you would pretty much need an airtight box made from solid dolomite to keep bugs out of a house this time of year. But if you spray the areas they might get in at - baseboards (along the adjoining wall) windows (especially in the basement, if you have one) doorways, etc - then you should be able to keep most future guests outside. But also, be prepared to see some every now and again. I understand, its gross to see one in the fridge, however, it was just the first one.
-Current W.I.P.
Kidding! Kidding!
Seriously is one roach even worth it to go apartment hunting, moving all your stuff again and relocate? If you got other problems with your lease you should address them instead of trying to get off your lease with a technicality.
As for the roach.. i found that once insects move into your house they are hard to remove... just like bad tenants. You should either inform your landlord and see what he'll do about it or take matter in your own hands and get some roach hotels or insecticides. If you are as clean as you say then they'll eventually starved themselves out.
Or call an exterminator. Whatever works.
It's terrifying and stressful now, but eventually you will not be anxious about it. I'm anxious for a couple of days if I see a bug in/near my house but you eventually calm down.
One roach is nothing. Just to give you an idea (albeit, sickening) of what roach infestetation is really like, it's when every cupboard, every box, every THING that is not a wall (and most of the walls) have roaches living under it. Everywhere. It takes us generally 2 weeks or so of fog-bombing and baiting to clear a 1-2 bedroom of a moderate roach infestation, but that usually does it.
As someone who owns/works with apartments in the lower rent category, they will appear once in a while in clean apartments, they are roaches. But if you keep clean yourself (don't leave food out, keep your stuff sealed and dishes in the dishwasher or cleaned) you'll be ok. Roaches are only a big problem with dirty people. And it doesn't sound like you're dirty.
"Oh what a day, what a LOVELY DAY!"
many places obligate landlords to pay for exterminators once in a while
This story scared the heck outta me.
I went to stay at a friend's for a few days
Call landlord, inspect fridge all over for more roaches. I mean all over. every last damn nook. If the fridge came with the place, and you find more than 1-2 in/on the fridge? Probably means they're living in the fridge. In my case I had just moved in so it didn't take much to convince the landlord he owed me a new, uninfested fridge- you might have difficulty since you've been there a while, although you could work the filthy neighbors angle, particularly if its against their wall or something.
Bathroom cabinet was actually a freestanding "bathroom organizer" that a previous tenant had left there; the solution was to spray the live ones and get the thing out of there ASAP.
with the main sources of roach problems gone I spent a few weeks chasing the remainder of the population around various dark areas-
" fridge gone? fine, we're all packing up and moving under the radiator. Shit, he sprayed that? umm.. lets hide behind this shelf here. gaaaah, there's a bait here! retreat to the windowsill under the A/C!"
after patching up all the roach spawning points (dark areas underneath things) on one side of the apartment they seem to have finally given up. I also bought a 6-pack of baits and dispersed them right away. NOT TRAPS, which kill the ones that wander into them, but BAITS, which don't kill immediately and help contaminate/destroy the entire nest. also scattered some Diatomaceous earth and used the spot-killer spray for active live ones.
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