What is happening? I just walked into my kitchen and saw a roach the size of my thumb on the wall. I killed it with my flip flop and it's left me a little shaken up. What the [expletive]??
I'm not sure this place is going to work out. Can you break a lease because the place has a bug problem? I didn't sign up for this.
You're in Chicago. Give them bribes to make them go away.
If only I could.
I'm honest to God a little traumatized after seeing that thing. It was like something you see in a zoo, not your apartment. I need a drink now.
So far the landlord seems very good about maintenance but I fear this problem will be too big to fully eradicate. Some googling tells me that a landlord failing to exterminate pests is grounds to terminate a lease early but I'm sure they could make it hard if they wanted to. Hopefully it won't come to that.
If you want a good bout of insomnia, check out "Infested" on Animal Planet. Your story sounds a ton like the intro to one of those episodes. All that's missing is the horribly unhygienic neighbor, and then you contract some kind of disease from having the filthy little [expletive] in your home.
JL21 wrote:If you want a good bout of insomnia, check out "Infested" on Animal Planet. Your story sounds a ton like the intro to one of those episodes. All that's missing is the horribly unhygienic neighbor, and then you contract some kind of disease from having the filthy little [expletive] in your home.
I bet I do have a nasty neighbor somewhere. In fact, I wonder about one of the apartments beneath me. The day the exterminators came to do the whole building that person had put a note on their door saying that they had already done it? Really? Already done your own professional extermination job? I'm skeptical.
The normal roaches are gross, but I can handle them, at least temporarily. I'm not very squeamish about this kind of thing. But that big [expletive] I just saw has got me seriously freaked out. I can't abide those and I know there's going to be more.
jim wrote: Then one day for some reason I got some inspiration and decided to do laundry for the first time on over a month, and I moved the pile of clothes that had been sitting in the closet along with some pizza boxes and what not - and I swear the floor looked alive. HUNDREDS of them. All scurrying about.
After that the incident rate went down in my room but then everyone on the floor complained of more roaches. I never told anyone where they came from. Everyone suspected it was the fat asian kid with the giant porn collection and the private room who never talked to anyone.
Holy [expletive], I missed this the first time. Hilarious. I love that it got pinned on a fat Asian porn collector.
JL21 wrote:How many do you see on an average night now, after the exterminator's trip(s)?
In the couple weeks after the exterminators came I saw one or two every other day. I'd find dead ones mostly. I haven't found many dead ones lately and the numbers seem to be increasing. Now I'd say I see 5-10 per day, of various sizes. It's hard to know though because it's not like I keep a tally. The other night I went to get a new trash bag out of the box under the sink and got a heck of a surprise. The mofos had set up shop in that box. There must have been a dozen of them living in it. The biggest I've seen until tonight is maybe a quarter inch long. Seeing that GIANT f*cker tonight was a real shock. I haven't seen roaches that big since Laos.
I think I need to go on the offensive. I'm going to get some boric acid, poison, and a [expletive] load of caulk. First I'm going to caulk the [expletive] out of this place. Then I'm going to put boric acid down in strategic areas and poison as well.
I'm also going to stay on the landlord's ass about this and see if they can investigate some of the other units.
What is happening? I just walked into my kitchen and saw a roach the size of my thumb on the wall. I killed it with my flip flop and it's left me a little shaken up. What the [expletive]??
I'm not sure this place is going to work out. Can you break a lease because the place has a bug problem? I didn't sign up for this.
You're in Chicago. Give them bribes to make them go away.
If only I could.
I'm honest to God a little traumatized after seeing that thing. It was like something you see in a zoo, not your apartment. I need a drink now.
So far the landlord seems very good about maintenance but I fear this problem will be too big to fully eradicate. Some googling tells me that a landlord failing to exterminate pests is grounds to terminate a lease early but I'm sure they could make it hard if they wanted to. Hopefully it won't come to that.
That's about right. If you haven't already, check the Chicago landlord/tenant ordinance...it's tenant friendly from what I understand.
EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWW. Is this an apartment building w/several tenants? How about getting together w/your neighbors and all of you confronting the landlord?
heyzeus wrote:Two things: 1. Don't ever move to Texas. All the roaches are bigger than a piddly little thumb. That's just the starting off point.
2. Your neighbor who put the note on his door? If you were to go in his apartment, it would look like the "sloth" scene from Seven. Guaranteed.
I'm talking about my whole thumb. This thing was a behemoth, especially compared to other onces. It was a [expletive] aircraft carrier.
Anyway, failure to exterminate pests is ground for early termination of the lease. Things get trickier though if the landlord is trying to fix the problem instead of just doing nothing. But just putting down some gell bait every couple of months isn't going to cut it here. This needs some hardcore extermination.
