Eliminating Cockroaches For Good: A Comprehensive Approach For Collegeville Homes

Step One: How To Identify A Cockroach Infestation

How do you know if cockroaches are in your house? Perhaps you had the terrifying experience of watching a cockroach dart from behind a cabinet when you moved it, or you sat down on the sofa, and a roach scurried out from between your feet and ran across the living room floor. But how do you know if these experiences are evidence of cockroaches inside your walls, in the crawl space, or behind the kitchen cabinets? 

Although cockroaches are active at night while you sleep, you can tell if they are in your Collegeville house by investigating for these signs of a cockroach infestation:

Let's briefly examine each sign so you can identify an infestation. 

Cockroaches defecate as they travel through a home. American and oriental cockroaches produce rod-shaped, ridged droppings with blunt ends, while German cockroaches leave behind fecal matter resembling coffee grounds. Look for these materials in kitchen cabinets, drawers, under furniture, countertops, and behind appliances. 

Cockroaches do not lay individual eggs but produce capsule-like structures (ootheca) that contain many eggs. They use their saliva to stick these oblong, brown containers near food sources in laundry rooms, basements, and underneath kitchen cabinets. One ootheca of prolific German cockroaches has up to 40 eggs, so when you consider that many female cockroaches deposit these throughout your house, you can see how an infestation can quickly develop.

Cockroaches are insects; one characteristic of insects is their skeleton is on the outside of the body. For these creatures to progress through each growth stage, they must shed (molt) their exterior shell to allow their body to expand. Finding discarded shells is another sign of cockroaches in your home.

Have you wondered how insects communicate since they don't have tongues and can't talk? Since they cannot speak, cockroaches produce pheromones to create trails that guide other roaches to food sources and nests; they also use these for mating purposes. The pheromones leave a musty odor that can be detected by those with sensitive noses when many cockroaches are present in a confined area. 

The sighting of one or more cockroaches can indicate an infestation. Three types of cockroaches invade Collegeville homes: American, oriental, and German. American cockroaches typically stay in the yard but occasionally invade a home. They have a 1 1/4 to 2 1/8-inch reddish brown body with a figure-eight pattern on the back of their head. Oriental cockroaches have slightly smaller bodies of about 1 inch, but the easy way to identify them is by their jet-black, shiny color. Also called waterbugs or black beetles, oriental cockroaches prefer cool, damp crawl spaces. German cockroaches have a 1/2 to 5/8-inch light brown to tan body with two darker parallel stripes down the back. These cockroaches enjoy warm, humid areas where temperatures are over 70?.

Terra Pest Management Specialists provides cockroach pest control in Collegeville, so you don't have to battle a cockroach infestation in your home. Our pest specialists know the signs for each species and can determine if cockroaches have set up colonies in your house.