Unexpected cost of honeymoon #1
Jul. 20th, 2006 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiriasWe 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.
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.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 12:48 pm (UTC)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.