Thursday, November 24, 2011

The Attack of the Moth Beast From HELL OR Happy Thanksgiving to Insects OR Happy Thanksgiving to the Rest of You, Too!

In the last few years there's been an ongoing battle with a gigantic, enormous, beastly pest in my house.  (No, not HIM.  Although HIM, the man to whom I'm married, can be a pest, he isn't the pest of which I speak.)

Not cockroaches, silverfish, ants, or alien hordes from the Dagobah System.  (Okay, who got that reference?  Go ahead, admit you're a technogeek from the seventies.)

No, it's #$%@^&!!! moths.  Little vicious heifers called meal moths.



Apparently these fiends from hell get into various pantry food.  (Dry pet food, rice, cereal, anything not battened down with iron clippies that would make a dominatrix howl.)  They lay their little eggy vermin and then they take over your house.  (I was wondering who was TIVO-ing Desperate Housewives.)  Did I mention these little sh*theads are only 1/4 inch long, fully grown?

Well, they are.  1/4 inch FULLY FRICKIN' GROWN!!!


How to get rid of meal moths?  Pray, light your house on fire with napalm, and rebuild in Alaska, where hopefully the little f**kers can't follow you.  (No guarantees because they probably got into your luggage, so you should just burn all of your belongings and move into a hut in the wilderness instead.  Get used to wearing leaves.  Learn that adage: Leaves of three, leave it be.)


I have to clean out the pantry of anything that's open.  I did this four times already.  I have to spray the nooks and crannies with a special insecticide.  (Which sounds bad considering the area is a PANTRY, which allegedly contains foods that WE eat.  Chemicals near food we eat = badness or possibly a third arm growing out of my back-ness.)  Then I put out these little traps that emit pheromones and trap all the boy meal moths.  (The lady moths are going to be pissed with me.)


Finally, the creme de la creme.  We'll have to wait for NINETY #@$%^*!!!! days because that is how long the eggs might continue to hatch.


I'm told the rotten little bleep-bleep-bleeping-bleeps get their danders up and find other food sources until you get lazy with the cereal/catfood/whatever again.  So I have to put those little smell-good-to-boys traps in every room.  For ninety days.  Ad nauseam.

At least it's not bedbugs.  Did I mention we're eating out for Thanksgiving?  Possibly Chinese food.



Anyway, I'm thankful for free speech.  Also HIM, Cressy, my favorite relatives who read my novels, my sister, my blog, all of my marvelous fans/readers, and the fact that I get to epublish pretty much what I want.  Screw the meal moths.  Life is good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

May your 90 days pass quickly and successfully! Happy Thanksgiving!

Carwoo said...

To you as well, Jo! Well, without the meal moths, anyway.

Body Secrets By Britt said...

I don't think we have them (here in Alaska). We do get fuzzy little worms tho, if you're not careful. I started finding them under my catfood bag and I said screw it and put the food in a plastic totel... no more bugs! Anyway, good luck with the whole "Plot to take over the world" thing in your pantry! Happy Thanksgiving!

Carwoo said...

Well, time to move to Alaska.

C R Ward said...

I feel your pain! What I find even more disgusting than the moths, are the larvae, which look a lot like rice, so rice makes a good place for them to hide. And if you're going to use zip lock bags to try and keep them out of stuff you have to use the heavy duty, expensive ones. They eat right through the cheap ones.

Carwoo said...

I think I have to throw EVERYTHING in my pantry away and just eat fast food for three months. Yeah, that'll go over well.

Anonymous said...

I know this is a super old blog post (in internet terms), but I just came across it while Googling in despair after the first moth spotting of the year. I've battled them on and off for years now; first at my old place, where I vanquished them completely. Then I moved to the new place in the winter (I'm in Canada) and come spring I discover that the kitchen was completely infested. Even moving to Alaska probably wouldn't work; you'd just spend several months thinking you'd finally got them, just for them to spring gleefully to life come spring. :/

They usually start coming out in April-ish, when things are mostly thawing, and I didn't see the first one until June, so that's a good sign, right? Right? *cries*

Anyway, I came across you here, and you gave me a laugh. I'm a hefty lady who loves cats, my (just turned 12) kiddo, and funny/engaging writers, so I'll definitely keep reading!

Carwoo said...

You know, I moved shortly after I wrote that blog, and hopefully we treated everything so that they were eradicated. But three months later, I'm still opening boxes in my new house and seriously, out flew a meal moth. Three months later! I killed it so quickly it was almost obscene. Appreciate the feedback!

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