How Do I Get Rid Of Roaches In My Chesapeake Home

Life is wild enough without surprises. No one wants to experience the shock of a car not starting, especially when you are late for work. We don't need our day to be upset by a letter from the IRS stating that we owe money to the government. It is one thing to get shocking news or to have an unexpected occurrence during the day, but it is another when it happens in the middle of the night. 

Few things are worse than stumbling into the bathroom late at night, turning on the lights, and seeing cockroaches run across the floor for cover. Your blood pressure skyrockets when you pull a towel from the bathroom cabinet and a cockroach falls onto your lap. The last thing anyone needs is a cockroach home invasion. 

When you find cockroaches in your house, you need cockroach control in Chesapeake from Hawk Mosquito & Pest. Our family-owned company eliminates cockroaches swiftly and effectively. As a Better Business Bureau A+ rated company that uses Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques, you can rest assured that you will receive the best pest control possible. 

One of our goals is to educate our customers about pests that may invade their homes. We assume you found this article because you've seen cockroaches in your Chesapeake home and want them out. Please keep reading, and we will teach you the signs of a cockroach problem, why they have invaded your house, and what you need to do to remove them.

How Can I Be Sure It's Roaches In My Home?

To answer our question, let's begin with a cockroach anatomy lesson. Cockroaches are insects with six jointed legs with horizontal spines, two long, thin antennae, a three-part body consisting of a head, thorax, and abdomen, and a pair of compound eyes. Cockroaches have wings or wing pads, but not all can or do fly, and unlike other insects, they do not have stingers. 

You are probably reading this article because a few cockroaches scared you in the middle of the night when you flipped on the kitchen light when looking for a midnight snack or went to the bathroom. Although your encounter may have occurred when moving a cabinet or furniture piece as you rearranged your room and saw cockroaches running out from beneath, cockroaches are not usually active during the day. Since they are active at night, how can you determine if you have a cockroach infestation? 

Cockroaches may hide during the day, but they leave these signs behind:

• Droppings
• Egg capsules
• Discarded egg shells
• Discarded skins
• Odor
• Cockroaches

Let's unpack each sign to help you determine if cockroaches are present in your home.

When cockroaches move through a home, they deposit fecal matter on cooking and eating surfaces, inside kitchen and bathroom cabinets, and behind appliances. The size and shape of the droppings are one way to identify the cockroach species in your house. For example, American, oriental, and smokybrown cockroaches produce cylindrical droppings with blunt ends and ridges; the feces of smaller species (e.g., German and brown-banded cockroaches) look like coffee grounds or pepper flakes.

Female cockroaches produce a capsule-like structure (ootheca) that contains numerous eggs. The number of eggs in the ootheca depends upon the species. German cockroaches, the most prevalent cockroach species in homes, have 30 to 40 eggs in an ootheca, while the other species have about 10 to 20 eggs per case. Cockroaches use their saliva to "glue" their ootheca. When cockroaches are in your home, you will find brown, yellowish, or black ootheca glued near a food source, often underneath ledges or in cracks in dark corners. When cockroaches hatch, the ootheca breaks open, and they leave their eggshells and the capsule behind. 

One characteristic of insects is they have an external skeleton (exoskeleton). This outer shell protects against the elements and holds their internal organs inside the body. When a cockroach hatches, it progresses through several growth phases (usually six). At each stage, it must discard its exoskeleton to allow its body to expand (this process is known as "molting"); the discarded shells are brown, black, tan, or reddish-brown.

Have you ever wondered how insects communicate? There are various ways, but most use chemicals called pheromones to alert each other to food and water sources, the desire to mate, or their presence. When there is a concentration of cockroaches in an area of the home, you may notice a musty odor from the pheromones. 

The final sign of a cockroach infestation, and probably the reason you started to research, is the presence of cockroaches. Although thousands of cockroach species exist worldwide, American, German, oriental, and brown-banded cockroaches are the most prevalent. American cockroaches have a reddish-brown 1 1/4 to 2 1/8 inch oval-shaped body with a yellowish figure-eight pattern on the back of their heads. The next in size is the oriental cockroach with its 1-inch shiny black or dark reddish-brown body. The most prominent cockroach is the 1/2 to 5/8-inch German cockroach with its light brown to tan body that has two dark stripes on the back. Finally, the brown-banded cockroach has a 1/2-inch body with two light-colored brown bands overlaid on its brown body. 

If this is too much detail to remember, don't worry because our trained technicians at Hawk Mosquito & Pest know all the signs of cockroaches in a home; they can determine if you have a cockroach problem in your Chesapeake home.

How Dangerous Is It To Have Roaches In My Home?

Most insects do not pose the same health risks as cockroaches, but an infestation is harmful for the following reasons:

• Cockroaches spread diseases.
• Cockroaches trigger allergic reactions.

Part of the problem is where cockroaches forage. These insects consume food in warm, moist areas like garbage and compost piles, sewers, and drains. These environments contain rotting animal and plant matter and promote the growth of bacteria, viruses, and parasitic worms. As cockroaches move through these unsanitary zones, disease-causing organisms stick to their bodies and leg spines. Furthermore, they ingest these pathogens into their systems when they consume decaying foods from these areas.

When cockroaches invade a house, the bacteria, viruses, and parasitic worms on their bodies transfer to cooking and eating surfaces, utensils, and other items in cabinets and objects throughout the house. Furthermore, they increase contamination density with their disease-ridden fecal matter and saliva that they leave in these areas and on items. Salmonellosis, typhoid fever, cholera, gastroenteritis, dysentery, listeriosis, giardia, and E. coli are illnesses often transferred to household members from a cockroach infestation. 

Cockroaches produce a protein that causes a rash on some people upon contact. Another problem occurs when this protein becomes airborne due to decaying discarded exoskeletons or fecal particles dry and float through a home. Those with allergen sensitives often experience allergic reactions and asthma attacks from the airborne cockroach materials. 

If you find a cockroach in your house, you need Hawk Mosquito & Pest to protect your family from the diseases and allergic reactions caused by an infestation.

Why Do I Have Roaches In My House?

Most cockroach species enter homes primarily from the area surrounding the house. American, oriental, and brown-banded cockroaches live outside underneath mulch piles, shaded flowerbeds, stones, woodpiles, and logs. When a significant weather event occurs and creates a food shortage, they try to enter homes through foundation cracks, gaps between incoming pipes and wires, underneath doors, etc. Unlike the other cockroaches who prefer to live outdoors, German cockroaches like to live in houses and other sheltered areas. They often enter homes by hitchhiking in luggage, bags, cardboard boxes, and used appliances and furniture. 

Cockroaches enter and stay in homes when they find food and water sources. American and German cockroaches like to live in warm, humid areas between 70? and 90? around water heaters, leaking plumbing, and drains; they tend to hide in kitchens, bathrooms, and laundry rooms on the ground level. Oriental cockroaches prefer the moist and cooler air in crawl spaces, while brown-banded cockroaches like hot, dry areas on the top of kitchen cabinets and near the ceiling. 

Cockroaches are omnivores and eat anything, including other cockroaches, wallpaper glue, book bindings, drapes, and cardboard. 

When our Hawk Mosquito & Pest technician arrives for cockroach pest control in your Chesapeake home, we can help you identify additional attractants.

What's The Best Way To Get Rid Of Roaches?

Using professional cockroach exterminators is the best way to remove cockroaches from your house. We have the experience, tools, and knowledge to eradicate these fast-reproducing insects. We will send a qualified, certified technician to your home to investigate it for entry points, attractants, and nesting locations and to identify the cockroach species infesting your home. 

We will create a strategic plan to eliminate cockroaches using Integrated Pest Management (IPM) techniques. Using IPM methodology means we do not overuse or underuse products and treat areas in an environmentally sensitive way. Furthermore, this method addresses cockroach life cycles and eliminates attractants to prevent future infestations. Contact Hawk Mosquito & Pest today to learn about our Chesapeake pest control programs and to get a free quote.