Puzzle Description:

to get rid of roaches? They seem to have made a very nice life for themselves in my garage. I don't want a bunch of poison. I just want them gone.

#1: cyclingwv (cyclingwv) on Jul 6, 2020 [SPOILER]

The natural enemies of roaches may be just as bad as the roaches themselves; toads, frogs, beetles, geckos, iguanas, centipedes, ants, lizards, snakes, and scorpions. Poisons are probably your best bet.

try borax (low toxicity, but still not a good idea where children or pets might get it)

Try roach traps. At least you're not spraying or sprinkling poison around.

I've heard of people who got a lizard of some sort--gecko or anole, who would live under the fridge and rid an apartment of roaches. There should be more to the story: if it manages to get rid of all the roaches, what does it eat then? My daughter had anoles as pets and had to buy them live crickets.
I'd go for the poison.

I'm with Philip, boric acid.
Not sure and also can't spell it but diatomaceous earth might work.

They are very hard to get rid of. They have been found to survive a nuclear blast even. When I lived in the desert, I had to have monthly pest control. I don't like the poison, but I hated even more to have a roach fly in the back door or appear on the ceiling over my bed just when you want to hit the hay.

Flamethrowers work well, but insurance companies frown on them. Borax in liquid drops if fairly easy to use safely, but it has to be in a formula the roaches are gonna want to eat.

Ewww! Good luck getting rid of them. Let us know if the Borax works. Great puzzle, btw. But, ewwww!

I don't know how widely available Bengal Roach Spray is (it's made in Baton Rouge, LA), but it's safe to walk in the area once the spray has dried. Just spray a line along bases of walls/doors, around the hot water heater (and any other water supply), and around windows or other spots that may have roach-sized gaps. Super effective, with very little smell or mess.

Buy your family members pointed shoes (to get in the corners) and put on some foot stamping music like Riverdance. Lol. Good luck buddy. Roaches are resilient.

They also make those flat glue traps that bugs can walk over and get stuck. They work really well.

When I was a kid growing up in NYC, all the kids knew that if you give cockroaches baking soda, they can't pass gas, so they go back to their nests and explode, and then the other cockroaches in the nest also eat the baking soda from the body of the exploded cockroach, and then they explode too, and so on. I doubt that this really works, but I always was intrigued by the idea of this awful chain reaction.

Great ugly image. The honestly best way to get rid of them is to hire a professional service.

I'd heard #12 but with ants and boric acid.

I don't think you can get rid of roaches without a bomb.
(I think the one I used was called La Bomba, and since it's a garage, it should be no problem airing it out afterward if you are worried about fumes)
I caught one and put it in a rolled and sealed plastic bag for a week to show my landlord, and it didn't die with no food and no air.

Try to figure out where they're coming in, and seal that up. caulk, or whatever is appropriate.

Just make sure you don't seal up the outside exits without sealing ones into the house.

Another "natural" remedy is diatomaceous earth. It kills them rather horribly, by abrading them in the joints of their exoskeleton and causing them to dry out and die of thirst.

Thanks everyone. The diatomaceous earth and/or boric acid sounds like the way to go. First I must establish a line in the sand. I DO NOT want them to move into the house.

I've been told they also come into places because their eggs are laid in cardboard boxes. A collection of boxes stored in the garage may guarantee an infestation.

The boric acid crystals actually look like fine powder and I believe you make this into a dough and place it where it will NOT be gotten hold of by pets or children. Good luck. Let us know how whatever you do works.

When I was young and would go to summer camp every summer, insects in the cabins was the norm. The guys in my cabin and I would just keep an eye out for snakes outside and grab any we found (that weren't venomous) and let them go inside our cabin. They generally kept our cabin clean...except for scorpions. Guess the snakes didn't like the taste of those.

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