Was That a Roach I Just Saw Run Under My Fridge in Spring Hill?

You were in the kitchen and something moved. Fast. Dark. It disappeared under the refrigerator before you could get a good look at it and now you are standing there not sure if you actually saw what you think you saw. You are hoping it was a cricket. You know it was not a cricket.

Here is how to figure out what you are actually dealing with and what to do about it.

What You Probably Saw

In Spring Hill there are two roaches you are most likely looking at when something dark and fast runs across your kitchen floor at night. The American cockroach which everyone in Florida calls a palmetto bug and the German cockroach. They look different, they behave differently and they mean very different things for your home.

The American cockroach is large. An inch and a half to two inches long, reddish brown and it moves fast when the lights come on. If what ran under your fridge looked big and you got even a brief look at it before it disappeared an American cockroach is the most likely culprit. These come in from outside through gaps around pipes, drains and any opening at the base of your home. Finding one in your kitchen does not necessarily mean you have a serious infestation but it does mean there is a gap somewhere that is letting them in.

The German cockroach is smaller. About half an inch long, light brown with two dark stripes running down its back. If what you saw was small and fast it could be a German cockroach and that is a more serious situation. German cockroaches live and breed inside your home. They do not come in occasionally from outside the way American cockroaches do. They establish colonies inside your walls, under appliances and in the warm dark spaces behind your stove and refrigerator. One German cockroach almost never means just one German cockroach.

How to Figure Out Which One It Was

Pull the refrigerator away from the wall and look behind it and underneath it with a flashlight. You are looking for droppings which look like tiny black pepper specks for German cockroaches or larger dark cylindrical droppings for American cockroaches. You are also looking for egg casings which are small brown oval shaped capsules about a quarter inch long. Finding egg casings behind your refrigerator means roaches have been breeding in that spot for a while.

Check under the stove the same way. Check inside the lower cabinet under your kitchen sink. Check the area around your dishwasher. These are the spots both species favor because they are warm, dark and close to moisture and food.

If you find small pepper-like droppings in multiple spots behind appliances and inside cabinets you have German cockroaches and you have had them for a while. If you find one larger dropping near a drain or a gap around a pipe you more likely had an American cockroach come in from outside.

Why One Roach Is Never Really Just One Roach

This is the part nobody wants to hear. Roaches are nocturnal and they stay hidden during the day. The one you saw at night was one that came out while you happened to be there. For every roach you see there are many more you are not seeing. German cockroaches in particular reproduce fast. A single female can produce hundreds of offspring in her lifetime and a colony establishes itself and grows inside your home before most people have any idea it is there.

The roach you saw running under the fridge is not a random isolated incident. It is a signal that something is already going on in your kitchen that you cannot see from the surface.

What to Do Right Now

Don’t spray the baseboards with store bought roach spray. It’ll kill the ones that contact it directly and do nothing about the ones hiding behind your appliances and inside the walls. It’ll also scatter a German cockroach population further through the house which makes the problem harder to treat.

Call us and we’ll come out, identify the species and tell you exactly what you’re dealing with before anything else happens. Our roach inspection in Spring Hill starts with finding out where they’re coming from and treating the source not just the ones you can see.