hi.
i got the roach you asked for. i'll be out tomorrow morning for groceries, but should otherwise be home almost all of the upcoming week.
a few notes.
1) that's the first roach i've seen since the first week of june, and it's also the first roach i've killed on the side of the apartment closest to the door. it was actually right outside the door, in the hallway, and scattered when i turned on the light. so, it got stomped on. that felt good.
2) it is indeed an oriental roach, which is determined primarily by it's dark colour.
3) oriental roaches are seasonal. it's been cool overnight this week. they tend to come inside in the fall. so, i was expecting them and hoping this would be a good test if my barriers were working.
4) the fact that it was stumbling around in the hallway far from a water source does suggest as much, although it also suggests that it may have been scattered in an unexpected direction from it's entry path in the back area by the residual sprays. i'll monitor the situation further, but if i continue to see roaches scattering around on the outside of the apartment, i'm going to request that the back room gets inspected for holes and has steel wool or whatever else put in to patch them up. i can help with looking for holes. the thing is that i can block the holes in the apartment, but i can't block the doorways, so if they're going to be coming in through there then the basement entry points need to also be addressed.
5) for now, i'm cautiously concluding that i've blocked this space off, but that it's only a partial barrier. further, there's really no way for me to guess where it actually came from, so no further leads on holes to patch.
(pause)
i'm sorry, i just want to clarify that when i say
"back room gets inspected for holes"
i mean inspected by you or i or paul or whatever. i'm NOT requesting an exterminator.
those guys tell you lies half the time, anyways. they want to be able to come back repeatedly, otherwise they're out of a job.
j