Pest control

April 6, 2008 

I’ve written about my fear of cockroaches before.  Family generally takes care of keeping it a hushed up affair even if they sight one ensuring it’s either out of my sight or killed and properly given the last rites. All hell breaks loose if I sight a cockroach even a dead one for that matter. My fear for this insect goes back a long way when my granny’s ancestral house was (and still is) infested with hundreds of them that it was difficult to walk in the kitchen without stepping on one. I know - what a creepy place! Nothing worked - pest control, Hit, acid, name it and it has been tried. The source of the problem is a  1ft*1ft  opening which was once the mouth of a well. The well has been covered for years now but there is a belief followed in South India that a well should not be completely sealed. I guess the well has drained and has now probably become a open gutter making it a heaven for these insects.

And then decades later, when I lived in Bangalore it was a nightmare in every house that I’ve lived. One night I wake up at  2:30 a.m. and switch on the light for I felt something moving over me and to my shock there was a rat at the foot of my bed and about 50 cockroaches over my bag, my clothes name it and over my roommate as well. Just before you start thinking what kinds of a shady place we lived in, let me clear the air. I shared a room with another girl for a year on the ground floor and it was a spacious and well kept one. We had it cleaned every day and turns out the lady who cleaned left the window open to let fresh air in. We forgot to close that evening and the neighboring house no doubt was a shady one  that was a breeding ground for cockroaches and rats. We learned the next morning that they had emptied two cans of Hit the previous day due to which all their cockroaches found a new home in ours. Without wasting any time, the first thing I did that weekend was to leave the place into another where the neighboring houses were great too.  This is a common problem in Bangalore when people get pest control done. The more I write about it, the worse I feel so I better stop now. At times, when I’ve sighted  a cockroach I dream of hundreds in the night - it’s not imagination, it’s just old memories coming back to me.

Now, I take good care in ensuring there’s not a single cockroach. Pest control using herbal gel is the mode I prefer - it’s safe if you have kids around. After using it every 6 months for the past year or so, I must say it’s very effective. First introduced by the Pest Control of India , it has been widely adopted by many small players. The Times classifieds in Pune has a lot of listings. They usually charge anywhere between Rs. 550 and Rs.600 for a 3 BHK. All it takes is about 20 minutes. They apply a small paste all around the house - cracks, furniture, wooden cupboards, toilets, kitchen sinks etc etc. Once done, you wouldn’t see a cockroach for the next 6 months. If you do sight one frequently, then it has not been properly done and call them up and they will redo it. I’ve found PCI expensive - they charge Rs.2400 annually whereas the rest do it at Rs.1100. Bangaloreans, check it out!

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Comments

3 Responses to “Pest control”

  1. biju on April 8th, 2008 11:45 am

    I remember ,when i used to clean up our well,there were quite a few cockroaches ,living in small pits just above the water level.It was a
    strange feeling to be inside the well surrounded
    by cockroaches.

  2. justin on September 11th, 2009 2:41 pm

    try out envirokil.co.uk for uk guys,sorted my problem out and it never cost us the earth about £90 if memory serves me right.

  3. RKVS Raman on October 9th, 2009 7:11 am

    Can you tell me where you got the herbal paste from(in Bangalore).

    Thanks.

    -Raman

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