The World’s Best Roach Trap

Yes, believe it or not, it’s the humble frappuccino plastic container.  For so long now, my brother-in-law has been swearing by this method of catching roaches.  Supposedly, the coffee and cream attract the roaches, especially the sweet droplets left on the rim of the hole.  Then, wanting more, they crawl further inward until they fall into the bottom of the cup.  And once they’re in, they can’t seem to crawl back out, with the domed cover making escape impossible.  No matter how adept roaches are at sticking to walls and ceilings, the slippery plastic surface of the dome makes them fall once they’re upside down.  So their hairy sticky grimy germy legs are useless against the FRAP TRAP.  Supposedly, my bro-in-law has left many a cup overnight, waking up to a veritable cockroach graveyard, with piles of lifeless invertebrates, one on top of the another, all covered in chocolate-flavored coffee and roach poop, probably excreted during their untimely creamy deaths.

Hating roaches with a passion, I’ve actually experimented with many ways to extinguish roaches in as efficient a way as possible.  It’s been a spiritual quest for me, like a holy grail that I’ve been chasing, how to rid my life of these lowly excuses of a life form.  I’ve tried brute physical strength, chemical warfare, folk remedies, you name it.  I’ve tried squashing them with army boots, pounding them with hammers (not good if you have wooden floors), I’ve tried pouring soap suds on them (supposedly they die instantly, but they just seem to get a tad cleaner), I’ve tried shouting at them (I read somewhere that they have sensitive hearing), I’ve tried setting them on fire (this one backfires when flaming roaches start crawling up your drapes)…name it, I’ve tried it.  The one technique I’ve found most effective is spraying alcohol on them.  I have spray bottles in every room filled with isopropyl alcohol for the sole purpose of spraying on roaches that are stupid enough to come ambling along when I’m there.  It may not be instant, but once they die in that pool of insect poison, they stay dead.  Somehow the alcohol short-circuits their nervous systems completely.  You know how sometimes you’ve stomped on a roach a hundred times and it still manages to revive itself and walk away?  Not with this method.  One time I even decided to do an experiment: I poured a whole bottle of rubbing alcohol down the drain of our bathroom floor (I thought, bring the war to the bastards, to their homes, and hit them where it hurts most).  BAD IDEA.  Within seconds, I had what seems like hundreds or it seemed to me thousands of roaches of all shapes and sizes, scrambling from the drainage holes to escape the alcohol deluge I just poured into their “city”.  I screamed like a 3-year-old girl and jumped on top of our toilet hollering for help before I die engulfed in a wave of cockroaches!

You get the point.  I hate roaches.  So I finally decided to try the FRAP TRAP.  Instead of tossing the plastic cup in the trash, I brought it home and placed it on the floor of our pantry.  They love that place because that’s where we store our rice, dog food, etc.  And the next morning, voila!  One dead roach.  Okay, it was a bit underwhelming, I was expecting the container to be filled to the brim with insect carcasses, some still gasping their last breaths, but at least I know it works.  So now, next time you pass by your favorite cafe, any of those that use this domed plastic container, give it a try.  Who knows, it might work wonders for you.  Plus, it’s chemical-free, so you don’t have to breathe in any of those toxic chemicals in most commercially available insect sprays.  I just hope all that creaminess won’t attract rats…