Best techniques for dealing with Tarantulas and roaches

As most of you know, I live in China and my neighbors have no knowledge of personal or household hygiene. Frequently, I will find trash simply flung into the hallway or pieces of food or bones left in the stairwells. Chinese are notoriously bad for this. Anyway as a result, my house gets the odd 3 to 4 inch ****roach. Naturally I hate these bastards, they are brazen, fearless and for some reason they think we are really stupid. Just today I had one run out right infront of me and continue on under my couch. Luckily, having fought these buggers in 3 different apartments, I've developed a sure fire technique that works without much fuss.

I went to the dollar store a little while ago and bought 4 mini plungers. As soon as I see a roach, I try and get him out in the open. Then I cautiously approach him and put him under the plunger. Opening the plunger just a hair, I empty a ton of raid in there and reseal the plunger to the floor. Within a couple of hours you have a dried bug body. Then sweep the guy into a dust pan and toss into the neighbor's entrance. I also bleach the floor shortly after to make sure the remaining eggs are destroyed aswell.

I use to live in Mexico and my method for catching tarantulas was to trap them under a box and then drop a telephone book on top of them and stamp on it for 20 minutes or so until a thick green paste could be seen coming from the bottom of the book. Does anyone have a better method??? I also tried wapping them with my ex girlfriend's sandals, that seemed to work ok but there was always that danger of getting bitten.

Tell me what you do, I'd be interested in picking up a few new techniques for this hunting season.

Borax, much cheaper than the specific roach stuff and works better too. Put a thick line of it around every floor edge in your house or at least the kitchen. It gets on them, they take it to the nest, it dries em all out. Get some caulk or spackle and get in all the cabinets and everywhere else there are cracks and holes. Plug em all up. Good luck.

Boric acid has to be applied in a very thin layer so the roaches crawl though it. Then they clean themselves (sort of like a cat does) and the boric acid gets ingested.

If you make tall piles of boric acid, the roach sees it as an obstacle and goes around it. That's a common mistake people make.

I can't help with tarantulas. We don't have them where I live.

I know why they do that, they eat the roaches, it's food. So you must be an outsider if you don't eat them. Just learn to cook roaches.

backseatjuan: I wish you were kidding, but that's the truth.

Anyone know where to buy Boric acid? They don't sell it at the grocery stores here.

Thank you for the tips everybody, much appreciated. I ended up fighting not 1 but 6 of them last night... 3 inch bastards... I hate those ones. Gassed one of them and held him in the chamber (plunger) for 5 minutes. He fell over, looked like dead. When I tried to sweep him into a dustpan he ran away!!! ARGH. I sometimes wonder if RAID kills them or just stuns them.

In the US, drug stores like CVS and Walgreen's sell it. It can be used as a first aid antiseptic.

Hardware type stores might have Boric Acid. I got mine at a home improvement store (eg Home Depot here in the States).