Animal Crossing New Horizons: How to Get Rid of Cockroaches
We explain how to get rid of any cockroaches in your own home, and if you can catch them.
Stay away from Animal Crossing New Horizons for too long and you might return to find your beloved home infested with cockroaches on every surface. Here we'll show you how to get rid of cockroaches from your house, and what effect they have while they're there.
On this page:
- How to Get Rid of Cockroaches in Animal Crossing New Horizons
- What Do Cockroaches in Your Home Do?
- How to Catch Cockroaches
How to Get Rid of Cockroaches in Animal Crossing New Horizons
Cockroaches in Animal Crossing New Horizons appear after not playing the game for a whole month, or if you've time travelled ahead by that long. Return and they'll be crawling over your house, your character making a little startled motion when you enter and see them for the first time.
You can kill these cockroaches by running up and literally walking over them. It's a little tricky as they scamper back and forth at high speed, but you'll know when you squash it, as there'll be a little ghostly spirit that rises up from where it was (but surely a cockroach's spirit should go down?).
If you're having trouble finding cockroaches, sometimes they're hiding under furniture. Try moving or storing beds and tables to see if there's a cockroach under them, then prepare to give them the sole of your shoe. Blathers would be so proud.
Once you've crushed the last one in your home, your character will cheer and a little message will display: "All the pesky cockroaches are GONE! I feel so much better now!"
What Do Cockroaches in Your Home Do?
Cockroaches won't damage your furniture or change your house in any notable way, but they will damage your rating from the Happy Home Academy. If you care about your score, you should crush all the bugs as fast as possible (and check out our guide here to see how to improve it).
How to Catch Cockroaches
Cockroaches are one of the few bugs in the whole game that cannot be caught, as they only appear inside your home and there's no way to equip tools - namely the bug-catching net - inside buildings. There is no way to donate them to the museum and all you can do is squash them.
If you didn't return to your home in a whole month, that's probably because you were fixated on our great Animal Crossing content, because I can't think of a better reason. It was probably Caty's heart-warming review of New Horizons, or the part that Animal Crossing is playing in the Hong Kong protests.