Is there any guest more unwelcome in your home than a cockroach? It’s hard to think of something you want to see less when you open a kitchen cupboard or underneath your bathroom sink.

With summer approaching, cockroach populations tend to boom because they thrive in the moist heat. Cockroaches breed in warm, tropical climates, which is why cockroaches swarm in the summer in North America. Now that the Canadian winter is long gone, the roaches come out.

Let’s look at a couple of different kinds of cockroaches and check out a few tips to keep them away.

Oriental Cockroaches

Oriental cockroaches have a shiny black to dark, reddish-brown colour. Males and females are easy to tell apart, though both are large. The smaller males have shortened three-quarter length wings.

Females don’t have wings, but they have wing pads that cover up the first few segments of their abdomen. Neither males nor females can fly.

There are three distinct signs which point to an infestation of oriental cockroaches: sighting, egg capsules, and odour. You may see oriental cockroaches during the year’s warmer months near gutters, landscaping beds, and emerging from storm drains or the sewers at night. During the day, Oriental cockroaches gravitate towards dark, moist, calm places.

Naturally, seeing multiple cockroaches tells you there’s an infestation at hand, but so does seeing their egg cases, which range in size between 8 to 10 millimetres. The cockroach egg cases are reddish or dark brown in colour, and each egg case holds about 16 eggs.

Finally, homeowners can use their noses to detect the presence of an oriental cockroach infestation. This species secretes a musty odour, which is actually a form of communication that others can understand and respond to. However, this notorious smell also alerts humans to their presence.

Oriental cockroaches feed on a range of food, from decaying organic matter, starchy foods, and straight-up garbage. These roaches can go up to a month without food but only two weeks without water. They meet up near sources of water in large numbers. You can try to keep cockroaches out by ensuring the areas susceptible to roaches are clean and dry, but once they’re in, you need to rip them, out root and stem.

For a thorough and safe cockroach exterminator in Toronto and the GTA, don’t hesitate to call Greenleaf Pest Control today. We know everything there is to know about oriental cockroaches and have the chemicals and skill to kill them in a way, so they never come back.

German Cockroaches

German cockroaches are the most common ones you’ll find across the globe. Infestations occur in many places crowded with people, and institutions like restaurants, food processing plants, hotels, nursing facilities, and other such places.

An adult German cockroach is easy to recognize by their light brown to tan colour, with two dark, almost parallel stripes on their backs near their head. Almost like a sports car’s racing stripe, but they don’t extend to the full length of the roach.

Males tend to be lighter in colour than females.  German cockroaches prefer to run, but they can fly. If the thought of a flying or running cockroach in your home rightfully makes you feel a bit sick, call the Toronto pest control company that uses the strongest, safest Health Canada-approved chemicals.

German cockroaches like feeding on soap, glue, and toothpaste, which explains why they’re drawn to bathrooms. Treatments need to be strong enough to eradicate the infestation and ensure not a single pest survives. They must also be safe for pets and environmentally friendly. GreenLeaf Pest Control always delivers on both.

Home Protection Plan

By the time you spot a cockroach in your home, the problem has already begun. Some people choose to protect their homes proactively by signing up for our Home Protection Plan. Here’s how it works.

We will visit your home and inspect the premises for any signs of an infestation or attractants. We’ll remove anything that attracts pests, and if any are there, we’ll exterminate them. Then, we’ll do an exterior treatment that acts as a shield to prevent cockroaches or any other pest from entering your home.

Finally, we’ll return to confirm that no pests are there. If somehow there are, we’ll eliminate them free of charge. Such an approach ensures that your home remains pest-free 12 months a year, so you can get rid of that fear in the back of your mind that worries about seeing a cockroach when you open a cupboard.

Whether you opt for our home protection plan or call for extermination, our professional, expert technicians will always show respect in your home and kindly assist you while fixing this unsavoury problem.

Promotes Good Health

Pests like cockroaches make people recoil because, on a very basic level, they are disgusting to see, smell, and be around. The situation is even worse than that, though.

Cockroaches are hard to kill and also spread diseases. The German cockroach has caused outbreaks of illnesses and allergic reactions. Cockroaches spread at least 33 different kinds of bacteria, six types of parasitic worms, and at least seven other types of human pathogens.

As they crawl through decaying matter and sewage, they can pick up germs on the spines of their legs and transport them to food or surfaces where food is prepared. Roaches can worsen people’s asthma attacks, especially in children.

Cockroach extermination is a vital part of promoting a healthy atmosphere. Yes, it’s crucial to get it done to make your home less icky on a visceral level, but even putting that aside, it’s essential for health reasons.

Most people don’t want to become experts on cockroaches. They’re nasty to look at, even in pictures. There’s no need to delve deeper into their habits if you hire your local, family-owned pest control experts. If you have German, oriental, or some other cockroach or pest, call 416-998-9473 and have GreenLeaf Pest Control on the scene right away.