Ok, so after a big weekend where my brother turned 40, a guy was bet 20 bucks he wouldn't ride a bike off the end of the pier - which he promptly did - and then didn't surface, so the bloke that made the bet had to jump in and rescue him and the bike (all ok...) my brother accidentally ran over another chap
, (he's ok -ish too) a motorized lounge suite with disco lights and a massive sound system was the way to get around, plus a few other minor incidents and I may have one or 7 too many beers...I have finally remembered my cocky killer method!
Sorry ladies - another story with this one...
I worked with a bloke who also lived on a yacht, and he had an unfortunate cockroach infestation, which I did not realise until he made me a very bad cup of coffee one day - with a roach floating in it.
unfortunately I did not see this roach until AFTER I had taken my first sip (and had then decided the coffee was bad and I was wondering if I could secretly pour it overboard) The cocky floated to the top, I saw it, did the old girly squeal thing, tossed the cup over board and promptly puked everywhere.
I'm not too sure if he was more peeved about losing the cup or me puking all over the deck!
Not really a good look! And I don't think I ever went back on his boat again - or let him make me another coffee!
Anyway - It was not long after that incident that I began to notice cockies on our yacht. I think one may have hitched a ride with me from his boat. Either that or they came on board when we had tied up to a friends Indonesian fishing boat.
It wasn't good, they bred like rabbits. They were everywhere. My hippy/holistic/don't hurt the environment method of mint and lavender and eucalyptus oil and all the other "feel good" ideas I was told about did diddly squat. I think the errr... dope smoke.... made them rather frisky and they were jumping each other like no tomorrow - and they were always eating! (gave them the munchies too!
)
So I resorted to some good old chemical warfare. (Although I did call my Grandma and ask her and she said "DDT Nik, only way to go" Hmmmm....maybe not quite THAT much chemical warfare Grandma!)
I bought a couple of cans of the spray stuff where you shut everything up tight, turn it on and bolt out the door. And don't come back for a week. Bit hard when it was our only home and we had no-where else to go! I'd clear out the inside (plates etc) and put them all up on deck, close all the portholes, set off a bomb, climb the steps, shut the hatch, realise I hadn't checked to make sure the lights were off or the gas was turned off, open the hatch, hold my breath, check everything and leave. Gasp!
Go to work, come home, open everything up and sleep on deck that night as it was pretty gassy down stairs!
Dead cockies everywhere! It worked...sort of. I had to do this a lot as they just kept coming out of the wood work. It took a month or so of continual bombing before we saw a change. The cockies got lighter in colour and smaller and then began to breed new ones that were rather deformed. They were not pretty at all.
We did finally get rid of the cockies, but at a price. The paint peeled off the walls of the yacht where the bombs were put, the herbs I had forgotten to put up on deck all died, I used hundreds of litres of water washing everything from top to bottom - easy outside as it was a bucket in the ocean job, but inside I washed with fresh water, so I carted a lot of 20 litre containers. And we had headaches for a while! (I don't want to know what was in those bombs...)
In hindsight Grandma's DDT may have been a better option as I bet I would have only had to use it once!
So I really don't have a good method of killing cockies. I take a deep breath now and squash them thoroughly with whatever I have handy. I don't like the idea of lots of chemicals anymore, and I have used the borax/sugar bait here at home (which must work as I don't have a lot of roaches).
AND I might add I haven't used the dope smoke method in a long time either. Not that it worked
