ViralHog“Hello, your worst nightmare calling…”
This poor unfortunate soul just got the shock of his life after picking up his telephone, only to find the end of the receiver didn’t hold the comforting voice of a friend or the person at his local takeaway joint.
Nope. Instead, he found a lot of cockroaches crawling through the wall-mounted landline phone:
I know what you’re thinking. Who even has a landline anymore? Well, this is probably why.
Evidently, the outmoded system of communication has a bug.
To make matters worse, the guy who came across this – the original Roaches Hotel, apparently – didn’t even live on the property where the bugged phone was infested.
The unidentified man recalled:
I took this video while at work on a property in Sydney and thought maybe I should see what’s in there as it looked dirty and was not working.
You know what they say: Curiosity killed the cockroach. It appears all the creepy crawlies are deceased.
They were found by workman on January 7 at a property in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. With the outback known for its amazingly scary critters, he’s probably lucky he got away with these little guys.
Saying that, after a quick Google, it turns out cockroaches are actually pretty grim animals.
They can contaminate food with their excrement and also carry disease organisms – which is probably because they like to feed on rotting waste materials.
Their presence can actually assist in the spread of diseases, like salmonella and E. coli. Many people can experience allergic skin reactions when they come into contact with them, too.
There really is no upside to keeping a cockroach as a pet, in summary.
Not to mention cockroaches give out an unpleasant odour – something grimly described as a ‘sickly sweet smell’ in areas of heavy infestation.
These little critters probably crept into the landline wall mount looking for their favourite warm and humid conditions.
It’s why they can usually be found in cracks and crevices around areas such as sinks, drains, cookers, fridge motor compartments, and service ducts – or landlines, apparently.
Cockroaches are nocturnal insects but signs of an infestation may include live or dead cockroaches, egg cases, faecal smears around harbourage areas, and where infestations are heavy, that all-important sickly sweet smell.
Observers of the video have mused perhaps a cockroach mama went into the shelter to lay eggs.
The female Oriental cockroach – one of the two species found in the UK – lays up to five dark brown egg cases from which hatch up to 16 miniature adults, and can take six-to-18 months to reach maturity.
Once an adult, they can live a further six months. They are dark brown-to-black in colour, shiny, have a flattened appearance, and can grow up to 30mm in size.
The female German cockroach – the second of the UK native species – can carry a variable number of eggs, up to a maximum of around 40.
Nymphs can take around two to six months to reach maturity and once an adult, they can live a further six months. They’re smaller than the Oriental cockroach, around 15mm in length and are yellowish-brown in colour.
Ick.
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A former emo kid who talks too much about 8Chan meme culture, the Kardashian Klan, and how her smartphone is probably killing her. Francesca is a Cardiff University Journalism Masters grad who has done words for BBC, ELLE, The Debrief, DAZED, an art magazine you’ve never heard of and a feminist zine which never went to print.