Kill Cockroaches With Kindness!

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ILLUSTRATION: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
You can kill cockroaches yourself, or just given them what they need to self-destruct.

Nobody, but nobody, will ever be able to get rid of our friendly “companion” the cockroach. Not permanently anyway. The bugs were on the planet long before man came along, and they’ll likely still be twitching their antennas millions of years after Homo sapiens has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Even  deadly gamma rays—as biological studies at Bikini atoll showed—don’t do much more than slow these members of the order Blattaria down a little. After wave upon wave of the radiation had passed, the roaches came back as hungry and persistent as ever.

What can be done about the stubborn pests? Well, you can kill cockroaches in any number of violent (and messy) ways: You can stamp on ’em, bash the critters with rolled-up newspapers, flip ’em into dishwater or down the drain … to no purpose, because countless hidden battalions of the crawlers remain untouched in their crack-and-cranny lairs.

Of course, you could call in an expensive professional “fogger,” whose liberal applications of spray will do in a great number of the bugs (and not do your health any good, either). But these poisons have little effect on the hidden egg sacs; before the insecticide smell has left your food, brand-new roaches will appear to take the place of the fallen.

Yes sir, these insects are nigh onto invincible. Nothing’s going to stop their steady scuttle into history.

But Mr. or Ms. Roach does have one weakness, a “fatal” flaw.

  • Published on Sep 1, 1978
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