In the much over-hyped Sydney / Melbourne rivalry, here is one area where Sydney is a clear winner. They have cockroach supremacy. Bigger, uglier, more numerous and more pestilent. And virtually indestructible too. I remember staying in a hotel room in the western suburbs when a gigantic cockroach wandered across the floor. I was armed only with a soft rubber-soled suede boot, and had to pound it to death for a good 15 minutes. Of course, once it lay flat and still, and its guts were safely on the outside of its carcass, I ceased to beat it. More fool me. Five minutes later it was moving across my carpet once more, dragging its guts behind it. See? Sydney wins.
Melbourne has less cockroaches, and their size is puny by comparison. Until recently, when the warmer, dryer conditions forced the humble black bush cockroaches into our city. They are not pestilent or a menace to society, they probably don't even really want to live with us. According to the article you should really just grab the dustpan & brush and whisk them outside again.
So if you see one on top of your cereal box (on top, not inside) there is really no need to squeal, retch, knock it into your kitchen sink and then carve it in two with a butter knife, spray its dissected halves with a liberal dose of fly-spray and then wash it down the plug hole with hot water. That really would be excessive.
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See, now I would think that was perfectly logical.
ReplyDeleteIt was looking at you and you could see its face....shudder.
Perfectly rational response. When we lived on the NTH coast of NSW, I stumbled into the bathroom one night to find them on our toothbrushes!!!! From then on the toothbrushes lived in the fride. We have no cockroaches in Ballarat-too cold!
ReplyDeleteThat's it. I'm with Jodie: toothbrushes in the fridge. Will be asking AB to buy some new ones on the way home ( I FEEL SICK ! )
ReplyDeleteWe had a massive plague last year, I felt like the dirtiest person on earth ( and my mum was living here too, AND we got weevils = bad housekeeping. Everything was awful )
And if you think i'm going to get the warm eco-fuzzies over that article, you'd be wrong.
I'll be getting industrial strength bugspray instead.
The ozone-depleting, bio-ecosystem-destroying kind.
So there.
Hilarious.
ReplyDeleteJust plain old fashioned funny. That it could drag itself around with its guts hanging out.
Too cold here in the mountains for hordes but we do get the occasional infiltrator.
And they get blasted I'm afraid.
Oh yes, cockroaches are repulsive creatures.
ReplyDeleteOnce a cockroach ran over my arm as I lay in bed. The thought still gives me the shivers.
I can list all the creatures that I'm not afraid of such as spiders, snakes and so on, because I was exposed to them all when I was really little when we lived in South Africa.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I had never met a cockroach until we arrived in the States.......they are terrifying and almost unkillable!
Cheers
Oh Yes Sydney is definitely the winner. We have FLYING cockroaches. They are big and they fly across the room to get you. They hang out in the bathroom, the laundry, the kitchen and you must always check out the BBQ BEFORE your guests arrive. Ewww. Did I mention that they are BIG?
ReplyDeleteThere's a little award for you over at my blog. Hop on over and get it! (It'll look great on your mantel!)
ReplyDeleteYep, Sydney wins, and this year, they are everywhere!
ReplyDeleteSigh. I'm glad it's not just me who has them.
I can't hit a roach anymore. Years ago, I smacked one, quite hard, with a heavy shoe, and it exploded!
All that yellow goo they have inside of them spurt out and hit me in the eye.
I had to lay down for days afterwards, and I don't think I have ever been the same since.
You didn't, did you?
ReplyDeleteBush cockroaches are quite harmless. They just look amazing.
I bet you did, too.
I'm sorry, but I don't quite 'get' what's excessive there? Are you telling me that there are people that don't do that?
ReplyDeleteps: don't move to a town near a mouse plague. It's not much better...
You haven't been to the tropics, have you? We have bugs here that can pick you up and carry you away. Thankfully the giant geckoes living in the house eat most of them.
ReplyDeleteMy Pete uses a can of spray a fortnight. If the poison doesn't kill them, they drown.
Ha ha ha, thanks for the laugh!
ReplyDelete...only thing to do is scrape them up and flush them away!! Yuk - I hate them too! They are smaller here in Canberra though - too cold for the really big ones I guess.
ReplyDeleteThat article?
ReplyDeleteThe bit about the toothbrushes?
The bit about the sewer followed by the vita-brits?
How am I supposed to get to sleep now.
I just thought of a new rhyme along the lines of if it's yellow let it mellow.
If it's black shove 'em out back
If it's brown scream the house down.(and do all that other stuff, except don't make it squirt in your eye)
It sounds a perfectly rationale response to me. I'd do that even AFTER I read that article. Little critters should have evolved a bigger brain by now. Then they'd be smart enough to get squished or carved.... and they would have grown fur or eyes or become somewhat attractive and less creepy.
ReplyDeleteAnd now we know why Aunty is the way she is. Partly anyway.
LOL! "Probably don't even want to live with us." Yeah, poor things. Probably we should take up a collection and start a charity for them.
ReplyDeleteI'm shuddering just thinking about them.
ReplyDeleteNothing lives in Norway but Norwegians and mosquitoes. Fortunately.
Heidi
Oh yuck. Do you know, I've never even seen a cockroach. But then, they possibly like sunnier places than Scotland, especially on cold, dark days like today. Sunshine? What's that?
ReplyDeleteI'm impressed that you got within a butterknife's reach of one. That's brave.
ReplyDeleteAnd having read all the comments now, toothbrushes, sewers, inside bits of cockroaches squirting into human eyes, etc, I feel decidedly queasy.
Eeeewww...I second that feeling queasy thought. The toothbrush thing really freaked me out.
ReplyDeleteSydney may be the undisputed cockroach winner, but Perth (particularly the suburbs near the river) gives it a good run for its money. Hundreds of the blasted things...and big.
Well, I found one INSIDE the new nappy I nearly put on Jessie's pristine bare bottom. Luckily Heath was also in the room, and spotted it inside the nappy before I did, alerted me, and then even took it outside for me! Can only IMAGINE the hysteria (quite rightly, REVVVOLLLLTINGGGG) had I actually gotten the nappy on her bottom. Makes me want to retch just thinking about that. Nice to see you, even though just for 5 minutes. Still smarting over missing meeting Bertie though...
ReplyDelete