Okay I’ve always had a fear of bugs. Absolutely do not like them! but I’ve been working on it. I’ve done lots of solo sits and sometimes I’ll have to kill a spider or random bug. Doing this as lessen my fear but I did a sit in Sacramento that had cockroaches. They weren’t necessarily inside the house they were in the backyard. I would mainly see them at night but there have been times a few came in. I did some research and apparently a few people have been getting these big ass cockroaches. I’m not from Sacramento but some people say it’s normal during the summer so I’m curious to know if that’s true? The owner never mentioned it but I wasn’t able to kill them since they were freaking huge.
I finished the sit to the end but would you have done the same or would you have cared and leave early
While I understand your aversion to insects this wouldn’t be enough for us to drop our commitment to the HO. Cockroaches are everywhere and my understanding is Sacramento is large cockroach heaven in summer. P.S. I’m from Australia so very few things (other than dropbears) concern us.
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Lots of places that are hot and/or humid have pests indoors, especially when the weather is at its worst and they’re in search of water and/or coolness or dampness. I’d take seeing a few as par for the course in those circumstances.
If a home were overrun with them, that would be different. Homeowners in those cases should be getting or doing pest control regularly, and if not, then they should be transparent upfront with potential sitters. Many people are freaked out by pests and would opt out, if they knew. (I grew up in the tropics, so not so much, but I wouldn’t put up with an infestation.)
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I’d hate cockroaches in the house but outside I could cope.
Please don’t kill spiders. Put a glass over them, paper underneath and take them outside
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Some ares are more prone to them than others. I did a sit at a very clean house. They had maid service come in once a week and yet I saw one of those large ones in the kitchen. I did kill it. I also do not care for bugs. Sometimes homeowners have a slight opening somewhere in their house that needs to be closed off so bugs like these don’t find themselves in. It could even be the bottom of their front door has too big of a gap from the floor. I was traveling with my car in the US. I went to a Home Depot and bought a roach motel and kept it in the kitchen for the remainder of my sit. Last day of my sit one more found its way in and the roach motel is a sticky surface and they die. I did not say anything to the homeowner because they kept a clean house and it was only in the kitchen. If they had it other places it would be a concern. I was raised in the city and my mother was petrified of spiders, the only thing we saw in our house. I became scared because of her. I grew up to be a nature lover so you get use to things once scared of like snakes weird looking bugs found in different areas. If you saw many cockroaches and in different parts of the house that would be a concern.
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No. Sp!ders DIE!! Not those nice garden orb-weavers, but members of the Tegenaria genus. I’m not proud of it, but I have a full-blown, horrible phobia of Tegenaria and no way will I be able to get close enough to be fannying around with glasses and bits of paper (besides the things have small jet units in their arses). I carry a knock-down spray and then a STOMP them. I totally get the bit about even house sp!ders being part of the ecosystem, but they get obliterated in my house and I’ve yet to be buried under flies..
Also, did you know that if you put them outside, there’s a good chance they won’t survive, unless they can find somewhere like — oooh, my shed – to move into? They’re not designed to live in the open. Well, to my mind they’re not designed to live anywhere except the inside of an especially angry blast-furnace.
ETA: Cockroaches, daddy-long-leg sp!ders, silverfish, mice and even rats - no problem… Never meta weta, though.
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A pair of my hosts lived in a pristine home otherwise, but the wife warned me about a small spider in a corner of their large home that she’d spotted and left alone, so she and her young grandson could observe it when he visited. She said I could leave it alone if I didn’t mind or I could presumably kill it. Shrug. I let it be.
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In Queensland, we call the big cockies “racehorses”. On Australia Day the annual cockroach races are held at Brisbane’s iconic Story Bridge Hotel.
I love some of the winners names
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Lord of the Drains says it all!
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I haven’t experienced cockroaches in any sit I’ve done. I think that’s why I was scared since I didn’t know I might see some in the house. I wouldn’t necessarily drop a sit unless it was overrun
There was an opening and they would often come into the kitchen. It was definitely not over run but I would at least find four every other day. I couldn’t kill it because it was freaking huge and I would just swoosh it away with the sweeper. Rarely I would see one come in the living room. I just didn’t expect it
I would usually find four in the house every other day. I didn’t like seeing them. I also could not kill them since they were freaking huge so I just used the sweeper to swoosh them back into the yard
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I lived in the Sacramento Valley for 17 years. Cockroaches are a normal part of the outdoor environment in the region, especially in summer. It’s good you didn’t leave the sit just because you saw some outside — I think that would have been very unreasonable.
But maybe I misunderstood your post — you said you didn’t necessarily see them inside?
I thought this post was a bit OTT, bugs are everywhere, but four giant cockroaches in the house on one day multiple times is A LOT of cockroaches! I would ask the owners how they manage the cockroaches inside the house. They will surely have a solution and would appreciate you being proactive. Maybe they have roach motels or something that go under the kitchen sink? I don’t know, we don’t have them, but ants are common here and we have practices to keep them out of the house. It’s in our Home Guide. We always appreciate when sitters manage them before it becomes a problem. Good luck, glad you aren’t leaving the sit and hope you find a quick and easy solution!
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4 a day is a lot! That would freak me out! I only saw one alive in two weeks and one dead in the roach motel. Maybe mention to homeowner to have the hole fixed. If you are still there, maybe try and plug the hole with something.
When something is ‘normal’ in a certain area, a sitter should never leave a sit early in my opinion. It’s up to each sitter to do their research on a destination before they arrive, I don’t think it should be up to an owner to educate anyone on what is very normal in their particular area… and infestation is different, but that’s not what you had.
We had cockroaches in the small town where we were sitting last month, but it’s totally normal for that area, it’s rural, it’s just life.
I hugely dislike them, they look like the toughest beasties in existence, hard as nails, but if we want to sit in certain areas, we just need to put up with them.
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Last spring, we stayed in an Earthship Airbnb in New Mexico that was infested with gnats. It wasn’t very good. You just couldn’t be there when the sun was bright during the day. I asked the host nicely if she was aware of it or if it was common with earthships, since they all grow plants inside. She explained she had to replace the water and soil recently, which caused some issues with her plants. I asked if there was anything we could do, but not much really. Luckily, we only stayed a couple of nights because I think if I had stayed more than that, I would have lost my mind. Some pests are harmless, but they are still very annoying and kind of gross. I learned I probably won’t stay in another Earthship again, but it was worth the experience!
I lived in a top-floor condo in Chicago, so bugs inside our home were very rare, except, as others have mentioned, when the weather was really bad. Lots of rain followed by high humid temperatures sprouted lots of mosquitoes. Occasionally, there would be aunts coming from outside, but nothing crazy.
Now I’m in a dryer part of the U.S., but this year it’s been getting a lot of rain, so more bugs… specifically wasps, midges, and spiders! We live very close to a creek, so that also explains it. We just ordered a “pestie” kit. It’s DIY pest control, which is supposedly pet and human-friendly. It’s still a pesticide, so we got warning flags, but once the solution is dry, it’s safe. They do all kinds of bug treatment formulas, and cockroaches were one of the options, so it might be worth suggesting that if you’re comfortable bringing it up.
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Get insect kiiler spray to remediate. And don’t go look on the ground at night lol. I’ve had to buy mouse traps for a sit because the HO refused so had an infestation, and I can’t live with pests inside the home. It’s just unsanitary.
