They can be quite common during rainy weeks. Once inside, they will take advantage of any food items they can find, but they will not typically damage books, electrical insulation, wall board, etc. as the other roaches do.

When I lived in Beaufort (zone 8b) I had to deal with them periodically. I used the kind of roach traps that have a growth regulator. Buy the kind that says it's for large roaches, waterbugs, etc. I also used Boric acid in the crooks and crannies (Roach Pruf is pure boric acid). Read and follow all directions for use and placement.

Keep wet leaves cleaned from porches and walkways around the home. And if they are really bad, you might want to have someone come and treat your crawl spaces under the home (if you have one). You might want to make sure that you have all entry holes from the outside (check pipes, etc.) sealed up tight and that your doors have good seals on them. I would have to say that exclusion is probably the first defense!

Mind you, I have NOTHING against the exterminators, but I just can't be exposed to chemicals. I've learned to deal with critters like this in other ways. Seems to work!!!!

The rainy weather this summer is one of the culprits for bringing them into the house. I raise finches in a Florida room off the living room; can't use insecticides around them. But I'll frequently find Palmetto bugs munching in their seed dishes when the lights come on in the morning (I've found sucking these stinkers up in a vacuum to be quite nice...if you can catch them. Place a mothball or two in the bag to make sure they are dead).

I've found the boric acid to be quite useful. If you can find good ole fashioned 20 Mule Team Borax (a laundry additive) in your grocery store (in the aisle with the other laundry soaps), you can also use this; this is pure boric acid and generally less expensive than Roach Pruf. I sprinkle a very thin line of this in cracks and around doors; it's quite effective at keeping these things out.

I'll also rake pine needles/leaves away from the foundation of the house but to be honest, never noticed an improvement in the Palmetto bug visits.

They'll often come up through cracks in the walls under the sink; where the water pipes/drains come into or go out of your house. Some people use that foam sealant in a can (the stuff that expands impressively) to seal these entrances off.

Gail

I always put dead roaches of any kind in the toilet. Even a dead roach can give birth. And I've seen plenty that I thought were good and dead start to limp away. Bleah!

Last week I found a Palmetto bug in my bathroom sink when I went upstairs to get ready for bed. Whapped it with my shoe and beheaded it; ran water in the sink to wash both body parts down the drain.

Next morning when I got up, the headless body had managed to wiggle its way back up the drain and was sitting in the sink, waiting to say howdy!

Gail

I've always heard that when you see one, there are plenty more hiding.

I try to remind myself that they have a place in nature; basically cleaning up after dead things and speeding up the process of decay.

I'd be much happier if they just stayed outside and enjoyed Mother Nature instead of coming inside for a visit with me.

Gail

When she finally found her own place, he came home to a roach infected home. All the furniture and carpeting had to be removed and disposed of. At night he could hear the roaches skittering in the walls.

He finally purchased professional strength insecticide, mixed it up, sprayed the place down and said the roaches came BOILING out of the walls, making a run for him but dying before they actually got to him. Said it was like the worlds worst movie on roaches taking over the world. He had to leave the place for a week while the poison did its thing. Came back and had to use a shovel to get rid of the dead roaches.

I think roaches do three things in life; eat, poop and make more little roaches.

Gail

The students living there are smart, well groomed looking and nice. I don't know how on earth they could live that way. Dh is going to make sure the future students have very specific rules about food storage and such and will do inspections once a week if needed.
And he has finally called in an exterminator.

I hate the drought we are in, but it has reduced the population of palmetto bugs and I am glad for that.

I do think people have a somewhat irrational fear of them. I mean, they dont bite or sting, they run away when you get near them, so why do I freak out so much? It reminds me of mice and elephants. I can happily go exist with lizards in my house, or some spiders, but roaches make me completely forget my stance against pesticides.

The sad thing is that, because I've used poisons on the roaches, I can't feed them to our tarantula. Not that I think there's any chance of me capturing a live palmetto bug and successfully getting it into her tank, but it's an appealing thought.

If only the blasted things would stay in the garden!

When I was in college in Sarasota FL, I was invited to a party at a rich persons house. The house had 5 stories and was on the bay. We had a pizza party on the rooftop balcony at night and had a fun time. Afterwards, we loaded up the pizza boxes and got into the elevator. On the way down, many palmetto bugs flew out of the pizza boxes we were carrying.
Thankfully, the elevator opened soon on the main floor.

While we had been hanging out on the rooftop, palmetto bugs had flown into all the mostly empty pizza boxes.

I used to live in NY...at one time I had an apartment in NYC. When there was construction in the bldg next door, we became inundated with roaches. It was horrible. But the rat was worse.....

Tourists, transplants, and non-natives, will mistakenly refer to the brown cockroach, American cockroach, etc, or *any* cockroach, as a palmetto bug. A TRUE palmetto bug does not fly, but the American cockroach does.

The scientific name for the species is Eurycotis Floridana and old timers called them "palmetto bugs" when they were cutting "swamp cabbage" (heart of palmettos and palms) for food. The most distinguishing characteristic of the true palmetto bug is it's foul smell it emits when disturbed. This is a sickening smell that smells like rotten palmetto berries where they live. Some old timers refer to them as them "darn stinkin palmetto bugs". They do not fly and are also referred to as "skunk roaches."

The Eurycotis Floridana is a tropical or sub-tropical species and is native to Florida, coastal areas of Alabama, and in the Caribbean.

Anyway, you'll find lots of hits if you google 'palmetto bug +boric acid'. Here's a link from the Univ of FL, and believe me... if anyone knows about palmetto bugs, it's residents of FL! (I'm a former native myself!)

To make this matter worse, my cat seems to be obsessed or can hear some more around.. I was like oh no..

Im having exterminator coming in tomorrow and have them to close cracks that I've seen under my counter. I was told to close any drainers and I did that. I wonder if they do come out of vents ?

Any tips for me to get my good night sleep ??

off to the store for borax and got the a/c set on 50. should do the trick!!

Rose

I moved here a few years ago and thought I'd never get used to those grotesque creatures, but I've managed not to freak out when they fly into my face while at an outdoor party, etc.

The other night, though, (stop reading now, seriously, if you are already freaking out) a friend of mine had to go to the ER because one crawled in his ear and got stuck.

I am severely freaked out and can't sleep at night now.

We do have an exterminator, even though I am organic queen and green home everything else. I just couldn't take it and figured something had to give.

When my mom visited, even though I had warned her, she had several run-ins with them and she screamed, "there's a wild animal in here!"

I am putting boric acid around my bed at night, along with packing tape, which I notice they get caught on, just for good measure.

Think I'll buy a can of Aqua Net if I can find it. Raid does not phase them.

I am SO not making this up either, I swear.

Last night, probably due to some construction at a house down the row, a flying cockroach got into my apartment. What a large dark moth, I thought, until he landed on the wall above my lamp. He seemed attracted to the light, to the tops of the curtain rods, and to (gulp) me. He also seemed to notice that I noticed him; as he lounged atop the curtain rod he turned his little disgusting head and wiggled his feelers in my direction. I had no weapons at my disposal except some soapy water in a spray bottle, and spritzing him seemed to slow him down some. After about 90 minutes of chasing and hiding (on both our parts), I managed to trap him under a large mug and some cardboard, and transfered him outside. He flew right back to my shoulder. I flicked him away and he landed on the other shoulder. I flicked him away really hard and ran back into the house shuddering. He was too large to consider squishing; if I'd stepped on him, the resulting displacement would have been larger than my shoe, and I cannot stomach that idea.

I may have to move to Greenland.

Now when I lived in Jamaica those roaches are the ones to freak out about especially when the took flight.

Four years ago we moved to an older home (1948) and the place had been empty for some time. They were everywhere! I was freaked out but kept thinking that I could get rid of them. I have 4 dogs so I was afraid of the exterminator hurting the dogs. I didn't know about the borax.

I started getting really paranoid about them. After seeing them return from the dead I was flushing them down the toilet too. One night I had a nightmare that a huge roach was in my kitchen, the size of a human, sitting and eating at the breakfast table. I believe a couple of it's legs were casually crossed. I woke up screaming.

I bought some of that organic spray at the grocery store and started religiously spraying the crawlspace. The dogs can't get to it and it even smells good to me. The remodeled house is sealed up and they seem to be only outside but I have never been so afraid of a bug in my life after that dream.

I recently moved to S Carolina from Rhode Island and I have never encountered anything like the flying cockroach that I saw last night! I was so freaked out that I ran into my bedroom (after I was sure it was in my living room), I had a grocery bag full of canned veggies so I placed them sideways along the bottom of the door, sealing the cracks with socks! I tried not to think about the possibility of any palmetto bugs already being in my bedroom. But I didn't encounter any more that night. I did have difficulty sleeping and had a few scary dreams. I don't ever get nightmares though! But this PB encounter did it for me!

Fortunately I live in an apartment community that has the exterminator come by EVERY THURSDAY and they'll spray in the apartments where there have been recent PB sightings. So they're coming tomorrow. I hope this is the end of my encounters with them!!!

I did a lot of research and bought Hot Shot concentrate at Home Depot (http://www.hotshotbrand.com/ProductCategories/OutdoorInsectcides/Pest ControlConc), raked all the leaves off my foundation, sprayed the hot shot all around the house up to three feet, around windows, the garage and crawl space. Mixed in a 2 gallon sprayer.

We combined this with raid large size roach bait stations all over the place. (http://www.killsbugsdead.com/fop_dc_lrb.asp)

Within two weeks I had no roaches. This was a year ago last month and we have had no roaches since. The roach traps were thrown out long ago, and twice since then I have sprayed around the outside of the house and garage with hot shot. Once in spring and once about two weeks ago. We have had not the first problem with roaches since, yet the exterminator would still be charging us a monthly fee.

Raid Ant & Roach spray works on individual ones and after we put down roach traps we start seeing dead ones belly-up instead of live ones. Last year it wasn't as much of a problem, and I think it's connected to the fact that last year a family of green anoles lived in our backyard. If I bought an anole or two from the pet store and let them go on my property would they stay here or would they migrate away? The lizards don't bother us at all, if they weren't so skittish my husband would pick them up and pet them. He settles for just taking pictures of them. :)

Well, if you can't beat 'em, at least laugh.
"Welcome to Joe's Apartment
It's our apartment too
We've been around for a hundred million years
And we'll be here long after you...."

Lots of flailing around and screaming (poor roach was thrown across the room and smacked the window) -- major heebie jeebies!!!!!!!

Gotta love the South!

Georgia is fun -- I don't care about the palmetto bugs -- but I do miss an honest to goodness, wintery winter!

1. Boric acid--from puff blower so it puts down a very fine layer--bugs will walk around lines and piles of boric acid. Do this only where kids and pets can't walk. It is toxic. It works VERY well.

2. A bug-attracting and killing tube gel from hardware store (forgot name) to squeeze into cracks, such as inside and outside doors and areas where you can't lay down the powder. It works for continued vigilance all by itself, should that be necessary, but also attracts cats and dogs so needs to be out of reach of their eager tongues.

For a while I always knew when one particular neighbor sprayed their house because their roaches would run up our hill and show up here. Mercifully they're (people and bugs) gone now, but I know from over a year's experience that the 2 simple steps above WILL kill any that have come to visit, although the one time they got a little established I started out with a set of bombs on general murderous principles and also powdered outside to catch any that managed to get out.

BTW, although the word cockroach gives me the usual skin-crawls, IMO there's a world of difference between bugs that prefer to live in the garden and...roaches, even if they are in the same genus.

There are YouTube videos of the wasp in action, if you can care to (or can stand to) watch.

Well one came into my den today and I didn't have any ammunition. I saw the thing scale the wall and I hit it with some Febreze to slow it down until I found something better. It got away, but it was still around. I found a can of Off! in the garage and hit it with that when I found it crawling on a box on my little table that I eat from in the den. I hit the box and it fell to the floor and I ran to get some packing tape - aha! - got you sucka! I brought the tape above it and taped it to my floor, even lightly pressing on it with my flip flop to make sure it had contact with the tape. Knowing I had it secure until I figured out how I would torture it, I went to the kitchen to feed my dog (who is blind and didn't know what all the rustling around was about).

Yep - you guessed it. When I came back to look at my prisoner, it was gone! And none of its legs or any body part was left on the packing tape. BTW, it had crawled over my foot at one point and the feeling of that crawl stuck there until I found an alcohol wipe and scrubbed the area almost raw. So I had to find it because I couldn't stand the thought of it crawling on me whilst I napped on the couch. I saw it on the floor trying to hide on the chair leg and I found an almost used up Yankee Candle in a glass jar and "caught" it. Now I'm really hoping it doesn't find its way out from under that while I find something else to hold it while I figure out how to I would like to kill it.

Normally I would probably leave a bug alone. Except for mosquitoes and houseflies - they get squashed ASAP. And I will torture a tick as long as possible. Thankfully I haven't had to do that in years. But I grew up in military housing that had roaches that were combat trained (we could never get rid of them no matter how hard we tried!) and these just reminded me of those damn things times a thousand - uck!

I laughed out loud at some of the stories here - thanks for sharing. I don't have Aquanet but I do have some Aussie Sprunch Spray that I will be bringing into the den as part of my arsenal for future smokies.

I found this on youtube about a 4" roach in Costa Rica who eventually made friends with these tourists - DO NOT view if you get nightmares about big bugs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOZD_fNRQCA