eww, that's true, but as long as we don't see them or the crap they leave out at night that's okay.

This reminds me of a story my aunt told me - she used to live in a disgusting tenement in NYC back in the 60's - and she said that the tenant above her used a washing machine that left puddle marks on her ceiling - well one day, a huge chunk of the ceiling collapsed and she had to clean up the plaster.

There was, however, a big hole left up in her kitchen ceiling. Well, now came the night, and when she went to sleep, she heard all kinds of scurrying noises and when she woke up to turn on the light - there were big rats everywhere!

She was completely freaked out by the incident, so she ran into her bedroom and closed the door not knowing what to do. In the morning, they disappeared, (I think rats are nocturnal) but of course they left their urine and crap all around the kitchen.

So the next day my aunt called the landlord and he was apologetic and all, and sealed up the ceiling, but like three months later, the stupid lady upstairs with the washing machine created the same mess again and once again, the ceiling collapsed allowing all the rats back into the apartment, crapping, urinating and making themselves comfortable in her kitchen all hours of the night.

She finally moved out - but that reminds me, once these nasty pests find food in your home, building etc, trust me, they're coming back - I think it only takes once - once they know food is "there" your house is pretty much done for!

That may be true in theory - but how many people do you know who've caught tuberculosis, cholera and dysentery?

Cockroaches are everywhere in Sydney. You'd imagine that people would be dying like flies from those nasty diseases. Where are they all? Why don't we hear about them?

They never lived to tell the tale.

I understand TB is increasing in Australian society, though probably not from cockroaches. I don't know why we don't hear about people who get sick from them. Maybe they don't know they're sick from cockroaches... or maybe the people who said you could catch these diseases from cockroaches made it up.