Unexpected cost of honeymoon #1

[eirias]

We left for Iceland with a whole bunch of dried goods stocked in our pantry, and returned to find Indian meal moths. A lot of them. A whole lot of them. And they're vicious, too -- two of them attacked me just after the shower this morning. If any of you have ever seen these moths (and most of you probably have; they're one of the most common household pests), you know that due to their extreme fragility, attacking a wet human is the STUPIDEST IDEA POSSIBLE. Especially since it's not like they can bite or anything. Which means, in my probably-absurd idea of moth psychology, that they must be feeling pret-ty darn comfortable in our home to be acting that recklessly. Fuckers.

We spent a good hour or two last night dealing with this and we'll have more to do tonight -- since we have so many, and since we were finding little pupal cases under a fair proportion of jar lids, I decided the most effective way to get rid of them was probably just to purge our dried goods so as to interrupt their life cycle. They will be expensive to replace, unfortunately, because we were pretty well-stocked, but we are lucky that it is an expense we can absorb. (And -- small silver lining -- this forces Graham to get rid of that Godawful multigrain pasta he bought in a fit of hippieish curiosity! Hahaha!) Thank God they seem to have left the spices alone. We let the landlord know, too, and he said he'd ask Terminix what else we needed to do. I suspect the purge will do it, really.

I'm pretty sure that our original, single invader came in the form of bulk rice from the co-op, which I state here not to denigrate the co-op (hey; it happens to every store, and they still sell damn good rice) but as a note to people that when you see one moth, which you probably will some day if you ever buy bulk food, you should not ignore it, and should instead go through your cupboard and look for more moths or pupal cases. When we found the first moth, all we did was empty and wash out that one rice bin, and that apparently wasn't enough.

Yeah. Ever since I was a little girl I've been a bug-lover, but not all bugs, and not in quantity, and not IN MY PANTRY. It was actually difficult to make myself eat dinner last night.

Comments

[gieves.livejournal.com]

Egads, they got into your jars? That's rough; I truly hate losing food like that. Freezer defrosts, power outages, and pest incursions are all upsetting. :-(

My parents, twice, had a massive infestation of the damn things when I was growing up - as a result of this, I still have the ability to catch meal moths one-handed without effort (being a pansy, I hate/hated crushing them... but I digress) - but the incursions stopped when my mother gave in and put all of the dried goods in Tupperware. One of my subsequent housewarming gifts from her was a set of Tupperware canisters, followed by a garbage bag full of assorted other Tupperware for all occasions**. Thus far, we've been moth-free...

If jars aren't doing the trick for you, perhaps air-tight plastic containers would? Rubbermaid sets are pretty inexpensive these days, and are reasonable indestructible.

(Congratulations on getting rid of the nasty pasta, though. ;-)


** My mother was a Tupperware saleswoman once upon a time, so the quantity of the stuff in my parents' house is still mind-boggling

[cynic51.livejournal.com]

>>My mother was a Tupperware saleswoman

*double-takes* Now, that I never would have guessed.

[sagittalbreast.livejournal.com]

The day I was born, my mom was supposed to be at a Tupperware party.

At least we made it to the hospital. Although, it would have been entertaining for my first baby pictures to be of a little, nude, pink thing being drained in a plastic collander.

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

gross, gross, gross. I really hope we never have to deal with this problem. All summer we've been battling ants. They were coming in on the side of the kitchen where we don't store food, thankfully, and the only food place we ever found a few wandering around was where we keep our oils, but there were only a couple there so it was no big deal. But seriously, every day they'd be swarming in huge numbers on either the floor or the sink area. We bought numerous traps but what finally did it was the goo that you put on the cracks in your walls so they can't come out. But gross. And recently we've been finding them sort of swarming in other rooms. There is a gross story regarding that but I won't even tell it. All I can say is that there is going to be one positive about cooler weather, and that will be that these fuckers will be gone until next year.

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

gross, gross, gross. I really hope we never have to deal with this problem.

I remember being totally grossed out when I read this entry. So, when I noticed a little moth in our kitchen yesterday, I remembered. I was relaxed, but there were two more today. Thinking about your experience with Indian meal moths, I realized it could get really really really bad if we didn't act right away.

This is bad timing of course, because it's the end of the term and Brad is completely swamped with studying for his law exams which count for 100% of his grade (my work is more anti-climactic, so I have stuff to do but it's not crazy mode right now.)

But yeah, I clicked on your link and we definitely have the identical problem. We threw out some, but definitely not all of the food we had in our pantry. First of all, we consider never-opened jars (like the button seal is down) and cans to be ok. We also don't want to throw out pasta we think we're going to be eating this coming week. A bunch of our food we just stuck in the freezer because we read that 4 days in the freezer, and they'll die. I would like to put all of the rest of our food in the freezer (pasta, etc) but there's just no room. Unfortunately, within the past week we went on this huge grocery run to stock us through our departure (and actually beyond). It's all of this frozen stuff from Trader Joe.

We noticed a larva in some not-well-sealed rice, and some silky looking residue (like maybe a hatched case) up under the honey lid. Other than that, there's really no sign of them. We don't have an infestation yet. But I'm extremely concerned. Most importantly, I want to make sure they're all totally gone by Dec 21, because if they survive over break it could get ugly. How long was your honeymoon? It would be nice to know how quickly it can get really bad.

If you have any more thoughts or information you can let me know. I just want to deal with this quickly, but without throwing out lots of food or anything.

[marphod.livejournal.com]

I'll save you from the *lovely* stories from my youth, about my mother's pantry. THis time. For the most part.

She had (and still has ... ) serious moth problems. Admittedly, she's refused (don't ask, and don't start me down this path) to clean out her pantry and replace everything.

She's tells me that if you take your bulk dry goods and hard-freeze them, it should kill any larva and pupals that exist.

WHich, while it won't help recovery (unless you want to store your flour/rice/whatever in the freezer and ignore that it might be a little protein enhanced), it should help if you hard-freeze any new bulk goods that come in, before storing them.


Uhm. yeah. An abreviated sharing of my pain. Something about 'storing salad dressings, as if it were fine wine'. Including a concept of vintage.


(If you value your health, don't eat at my Mom's. Please. Seriously.)

[eldan.livejournal.com]

Do you have any lamps that point up? Back in Ohio I found that leaving one of those on overnight was a rather effective way of exterminating fruitfly - they spiral in towards the bulb and then fry. Just be prepared for a strong smell of grilled meat that you will either find annoyingly appetising or utterly stomach-churning, depending on how much you are affected by knowing what you're smelling.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I've dealt with Indian meal moths. So have some unsolicited advice. :-)

I second the freezing suggestion. If you have any expensive goods that don't look infested, three days in the freezer will do the trick.

They can eat through plastic bags, but any decent, firm container with a good seal (we save pint and quart containers from Sushi House) will keep them out, in my experience. (I've been successfully using freezer bags around my bags of crackers and cereal, since cutting down the initial population.)

Clean the pantry shelves (and walls/floor/ceiling if you can) with bleach. (I'm not sure whether that did much for us, but it was a suggestion we took.)

Go to the hardware store, and buy the "Pantry Pests" moth traps. They have glue and pheromones, and work like a charm.

[harleybitch.livejournal.com]

perhaps put out some beer to catch the loose ones. Vaccuming also works but you have to find them. Also freeze dried goods and scrub the pantry. Meal moths suck!

[razberriswirl.livejournal.com]

I hate to say it, but we had a bag of corn starch from the co-op (bulk, of course) that ended up being infested with larvae of some sorts. Luckily Megan caught the problem before it went any further.

And I think a few of your moths found their way into our apartment. I walked 2 of them outside, but the other one just hung out in my bath towel that was hanging in the bathroom...until I got out of the shower. :(

I hope you guys are moth-free now!

[sagittalbreast.livejournal.com]

I think I had some of the Indian Meal's back in Mass. The freakist part was finding their little larvae in my corner/turntable cabinet.

I dumped my Martha White cornmeal (I want to have your babies Martha White) and cleaned the whole cabinet out with Mr. Clean (Mr. Toxic). Any of the vagrant caterpillars hanging around might find their way in later (as Blimix, et al suggested cleaning should help).

I'm raising potatoes and other people in my apartment and the I believe that the bag of soil that I bought (with poultry litter) had some sort of little (tiny) freaky fly eggs in it. They're having a turf war with the fruit flies that reside in my trash can. Stupid city living.