You can try spreading a lot of boric acid inside around the outer edges and under the floor mats. The dry ice idea, in theory, is a good idea since carbon dioxide is a heavy gas and they would sufficte for lack of oxygen. But since a car is not a sealed space that won’t work. Domestic cockroaches that are in a sealed container and deprived of all food and water will about a month and a half. The boric acid gets into their lungs and causes death that way by irritation. If you want to use the fogger, only one will not be enough! On a car this size to make sure, I would say that you are going to need at least four and then have it remain shut for several hours to make sure. There is a chance the fogger method might do it. But remember it is poisinous and it will be a mess to clean up because every surface in the vehicle will be covered.
My Dear Friends,
OMG! I can’t believe the three of you,
Tom, Ray and Dougie, advised the precocious
Bebe to kill the cockroaches with dry ice.
Bebe already got into this predicament by
trying to torture her younger sister. How on
God’s green earth is adding dry ice to that
scenario supposed to helpful?
How about calling an ENTOMOLOGIST?!!
Wasn’t there a mother or other mature woman
handy anywhere when Bebe called?
Mauturely,
A loving, decades-long female listener of a
certain age who is not Ray’s ex-wife.
Karen, Oakland (my fair city) CA
Please do not be humane; the last thing your neighborhood needs is a pregnant cockroach that is not native to the area. It’s a bad idea to release anything new into an ecosystem because you do not know what will happen.
I think that use of the bug bomb would be quite effective, especially if you first cover the car with a tarp in order reduce the chance of the roaches scurrying away from the car before the gas has a chance to kill them. These bug bombs (foggers)are also available at Home Depot and Lowes.
Heck, why bother? They would clean up all your spilt french fries!
In the early 1970’s while in the Army I was stationed at the US Army Research and Development center in Natick MA. There was an entomology lab there and they were researching ways to eradicate cock roaches in buildings (barracks, mess halls, military, housing, etc.) They were able to demonstrate that cock roaches could be render sterile by exposing them to ultra violet light. At the time I was reassigned to Europe they were testing the effectiveness by putting a know number of roaches in a sealed room and turning on ultraviolet lights during the night. There life span is normally measured in weeks so once one generation was sterilized that generation could not reproduce and the population would die. That was the theory anyway. There may be published papers discussing the outcome or perhaps the Development Center could be contacted if there was interest.
They had a room in that department with dozens of aquariums filled with every species of cock roach including the infamous Madagascar Roach at various ages. It was creapy. Ultra violet lights are not expensive. Just not sure if the perfected the technology.
I worked testing food service equipment for military use and also spent a year developing the technology to convert cellulose into glucose through enzymatic hydrolosis.
I agree that the CO2 is unlikely to kill the roaches, merely to anesthetize them temporarily, but since, as Tom and Ray point out, they’re probably crawling all through the recesses of the car, there’s no way to just vacuum them up before they wake up.
But y’all totally missed the opportunity for some jokes… She mentioned that her philosophy-professor father named the other two roaches Sartre and Nietzche. Sartre, for the utter futility of trying to kill this now-colony of roaches, which probably can’t find any exits from the car. Nietzche speaks for the roaches – “That which does not kill me makes me strong.” And of course, where’s Kafka’s Gregor (Metamorphosis) when you need him?
My summer job in college one year was to tend to the colonies of roaches in a university testing lab. We evaluated ways to kill roaches for the EPA. Powdered boric acid was better at killing roaches than any other chemical available. Even better than the stuff the certified commercial bug guys use. It does not clog the respiratory passages, it is a stomach poison. The finely powdered boric acid clings to hairs on their legs. They spread it to others in the crowded colony as they jostle against each other. They then ingest it while grooming. No more roaches.
As to CO2 - that is what I used to immobilize them when I had to do the weekly count. Gas the colony, dump them out on the counter to count. Put them back in the container before they recover from the gas. We kept the colonies in steel 30 gallon trash cans with an electrified border around the top rim. A few seconds of CO2 gas pumped in and then I had about 10 minutes to count the juveniles, males, and females. My wife hated it when I brought work home with me that summer!
I agree that the CO2 is unlikely to kill the roaches, merely to anesthetize them temporarily,
That is true in so far as the usual use of CO? because the cold slows them down, but keep the container (car) reasonable sealed and allow the temperatures to reach reasonable levels while keeping O? out, it is going to kill them.
My wife raises these. If you slice up a cucumber and put it around your car (or kitchen, wherever) the roaches will leave. They HATE cucumber. It shouldn’t take more than a day, though they may need an easy escape route.
It IS a bad idea to introduce foreign species into an ecosystem. Of course, the cockroaches are there and it’s not their FAULT they’re there. If it were another species of animal – one that Disney’s made a cute little movie about – everyone would be looking for a non-lethal solution to the problem. It rather indicates a warped way of looking at the world if our criterion for whether an animal is worth saving is whether or not we find the animal “cute.”
Yes, I don’t see why they can’t simply be lured into a humane trap of some sort, and then transferred to wherever they belong (the pet store again, a classroom, a loving home, etc.).
I found this online (http://pesteducation.unl.edu/pesticide/UserFiles/File/roach6.pdf):
“Because cockroaches cannot survive temperatures above 115? F to 120? F, it is possible to use heat to eradicate cockroaches from restaurants and food service establishments. After heat-sensitive equipment is removed from the building,the temperature is increased to about 140-150? F for five to six hours.”
Maybe wrap the car in plastic tarps and use industrial heater blowers to warm it up for a few hours.