Times are tough, but are they “$2,000 to infest your house with cockroaches” tough?
Anyone down with $2K for a 30-day pest control trial and lifetime of nightmares?
Aux Features Cockroach
Pretty much everyone is hurting right now. Prices are up, wages are stagnant, and somehow, someway… we apparently can’t trust the digital currency infrastructure that attracts parody rap grifters and this friggin’ guy. It’s rough out there, for sure… but are they “Here’s $2,000 to set 100 cockroaches loose in your home for an entire month” rough?
The North Carolina-based bug control specialists at The Pest Informer think so, apparently. According to a local news report out of Raleigh, a group of exterminators are offering up the creepy-crawly cash for 5-7 households willing to bunk alongside the insects for 30 days while they try out a new pest control technique.
There are, of course, a few stipulations: You need to either own the home yourself or have the owner’s consent (understandable), and despite the horrors, you can’t try out any other roach-killing solutions during the test. Also, you gotta be least 21 years old—presumably because you’ll need a helluva lot of alcohol to endure the whole thing.
If, for some cursed reason, The Pest Informer’s new treatment doesn’t work, the company pledges to rid you of the hell of your making using more traditional methods at the end of your disgusting, demoralizing month.
Now, hold on a moment. Before you stop us by saying, “Well, perhaps I’d consider it, but I live nowhere near Raleigh, North Carolina. Therefore, thankfully, I will not be forced by capitalism’s crushing pressures to consider prostituting myself for pest control,” take heart! We are told that you can reside anywhere in the continental United States and still participate—implying that The Pest Informer’s $2,000 compensation is wholly separate to the postage required to ship a boxful of cockroaches to your doorstep.
We’ll leave you the sign-up form right here while you ponder your newfound hygienic, fiscal dilemma.
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27 Comments
I won’t knowingly use other forms of pest control, but I can’t take responsibility if, say, a swarm of geckos sets up camp in and around my house…
I’d actually be tempted to do this, but the exterminators would also likely kill off the spider horde that lives in the basement. And the spiders are great for keeping down the really awful things, like mosquitoes, gnats and flys. I don’t mind the spiders, they stick to their corners and do their thing.I wouldn’t mind seeing how many roaches the cat would get, though.
I’m intrigued by both of your points. I also cherish my house spiders, but believe they would re-populate in a reasonable amount of time. Cat toys all around the house – another reason to sign up!
Yeah, I think of the spiders as a constant, but they’re more than likely just offspring of the ones from the year before. Still. I feel bad when I accidentally get a few of em in the vacuum or duster.
We had one spider who mostly stayed in our kitchen window, and never had offspring that we noticed, but their lifespan was about 7 months.
I’ve seen plenty of other baby spiders around to know at least one of them is reproducing around here! I try not to kill them, but if they hang out in the bathtub, they’re risking a drowning!
We had some people working in our crawlspace a few years ago, and one of them came out with a freshly shed snakeskin. Occasionally we find a rat snake by the garbage cans, but that’s probably why we don’t have mice. The circle of life!
As someone who has endured roach infestations when no one was paying me anything, they are a nightmare and you’d have to pay me a sight more than $2,000 to engage in it willingly.That said, if it was American cockroaches, I’d probably be more likely to agree than German cockroaches. Getting rid of German roaches is infintely more difficult, and I wouldn’t trust the pest control folks to be able to exterminate them if their “trial” didn’t work.
Oh, shoot. I didn’t think about the type of cockroaches. The German ones are the worst! I prefer the inch-long black cockroaches to those little buggers!
American cockroaches are bigger and grosser, but they also tend to show up in smaller numbers (when you see them) and from what I’ve gleaned in my cursory internet research trying to get rid of bugs in previous residences, American roaches are typically in your house because they’re looking for something (food, water).German roaches INFEST. They live in the nooks and crannies (so bug bombs are largely useless), they can go 6 months without food, and they multiply like rabbits.The only way I was ever able to make a dent in a German roach infestation was a sustained assault using everything at my disposal: COMBAT bait stations, Advion roach gel, intense cleaning, borax powder, can of Raid spray on hand just in case. And even then, as you start to see them decrease in numbers, you CAN’T stop, you have to keep operating on crazy anti-roach mode for months.
I don’t recommend it.
I only had one place where I had a german roach infestation. It was a studio apartment with a tiny kitchen. Fortunately I was young and rarely ate at home. (I was scared to even go in the kitchen due to all those mf’ers!) They never went away, but I eventually moved out. ETA; That was my first place after I moved from NM, so I was used to the big, black roaches we had there which was my only saving grace for being able to sleep at night knowing all those critters were scurrying around.
I’d be paranoid that I brought the fuckers with me to the next place I lived
Legit fear!
If it ever happens again it turns out you can buy exterminator level chemicals online and they work way better than store brands while being much cheaper than hiring a professional. As long as you’re using them privately and not offering a service for pay you don’t need a license. Just a pump sprayer available at any hardware store as well as gloves, safety glasses, long sleeves, pants, head covering, and closed shoes for safety.I think it was doyourownpestcontrol.com My wife has some relatives who are exterminators (too busy at the time to do our house) and they told us that the site offered the same type and strength of chemicals they used and that their recommended bundles were actually made to work together rather than whatever they have laying around.For less than $100 I got rid of a bad infestation of German roaches and bedbugs in a weekend. The mattresses and bed frames were a loss but neither have come back and it’s been years.
When my wife and I lived in New Mexico the roaches weren’t even afraid of us – once the sun went down they’d appear in our hallway and bathroom and kitchen. We put down poison, and they’d still come into the common areas to die. It got bad enough that I can no longer watch the movie Creepshow.
Why don’t they just try it out by giving the service free to someone who’s already living in a home with a cockroach infestation but can’t afford an exterminator?
Well, that person could also sign up for the trial and make $2,000. And I also imagine that a person with an existing infestation has been doing something to try to get rid of it. You can’t really test if your new product is effective if the home you’re trying it on has roach motels and bug spray already in use. Know what I mean?
One of the questions asked on the application (yes, I did!) was if you’ve had a prior infestation, so that could affect your eligibility.
Hell, I lived in New Mexico and co-habitated with cockroaches with no compensation, sign me up!
Hey, me too! My wife and I used to go for walks in Albuquerque after dark, and she described it as “Temple of Doom, only for a mile.”
There was a sewer grate outside one of my apartments and it was a literal swarm at dusk!
One of my old paint studios had a manhole cover outside of it and the feral cats we used to feed at night would wait for the roaches to come out and they’d gobble them up. Good kitties.
Another reason for me to sign up – my cats won’t bug me all the time for treats. They can hunt their own!
You Guys Getting Paid?
(screams forever)
I bet actual cockroaches own that company and this is just a cleaver way for them to live rent free in your house. Oh sure, you can ask them to leave, but they will just claim “squatter’s right” or some bullshit like that. No thanks!
If you’re moving out in 31 days… sure.
I think roaches are kind of cute. But I’m a renter, alas.