i'm just debating the idea of blocking a hole in my wall....
see, i'm in an old basement. there's cracks in the foundation, ancient sewers and abandoned properties all over the neighbourhood. roaches, where they exist, are generally a neighbourhood/city problem rather than an individual property owner one, but our concept of property in the anglosphere is right fucked so we lack the ability to realize that and deal with it collectively. what it means is that it kind of doesn't matter what i do, they're going to come back - because it's the neighbourhood that's infested. proper eradication would need to be done by the city, or by a neighbourhood group. and, like i say, there's no community awareness here....
i'm dealing with the big, dumb "oriental" sewer roaches, though, not these feisty little fighting german ones. these are actually outside insects, primarily. and i think the ones i've seen down here are mostly transients...
i literally have nothing for them to eat. all food is in the fridge. there isn't even any garbage; i pretty much survive on fruit, and keep the rinds and stuff in the freezer (and then drop it off at a charity compost when it fills up). so, it's not the best place to live, for a roach, food wise. except that it's a basement...
spraying & blocking holes with steel wool has been effective in not seeing them for the last year, but it's time to reapply. i will eventually spray like i did last time, because it worked: i went a whole year with nothing. now, i've seen two in the last ten days. as mentioned, i think they're transients. they were both old. and the orientals have a yearly life cycle that means old roaches die pretty much right now.
they're coming in through a large hole behind the stove that i had steel wooled up to great effect. figuring this out was a step forwards, as the previous tenants were apparently unable to figure out where they were coming from. now, the landlord wants to drywall the hole. but...
...the other side of the hole is a crawl space, adjacent to a shower. it's damp. and dark. i'm concerned that drywalling the hole is going to just give them a nesting space in the crawl space, and they're going to basically feed off each other back there.
i'm thinking it might be a better idea to stick with the steel wool and bait the crawl space once or twice a year. or at least spray it. i'd prefer to fill it with cement, but that's not an option.
but it would be nice to know if what i'm thinking is really feasible. could a roach nest survive like that, on itself, and still manage to grow? does that break some kind of conservation of energy law, or what?