Why had I not heard of molasses traps until now?

Some time ago I made the rookie error of tong-feeding live "woodies" (wood cockroaches, a.k.a. speckled cockroach, lobster cockroach, Nauphoeta cinerea) to my blue tongue skink inside his enclosure. Inevitably a few escaped from both me and the lizard and disappeared into the leaf litter, which turned out to be an ideal habitat for them.

For a long time I kept quiet about accidentally creating a breeding colony of cockroaches in the corner of our living room while I tried to find a safe way to get rid of them, or at least control their numbers, without having to completely strip out the enclosure and start all over again. Recently some were spotted around the house too though, which made it more urgent that I do *something*.

Fortunately I finally stumbled across this blog, which describes the use of molasses traps in zoos. They're simple, cheap, totally safe for humans, lizards, plants, and most of members of the bioactive "clean up crew" and, it turns out, horrifyingly effective.

This evening I put one in the corner of the lizard enclosure and 3 hours later so many roaches had already met their end in the miniature tar pit that new arrivals were no longer sinking into the stickiness because all the corpses were getting in the way. Pics attached, not for the squeamish.

http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatreptileblog/2012/05/01/pet-safe-cricket-and-roach-control-for-reptile-and-amphibian-owners/

#LizardPosting #PestControl #LizardsOfMastodon #PetSafePestControl #MolassesTrap