[insert high-pitched screeching here]

[kaberett]

Content note: household pests.

So. As has been apparent from... literally any interaction with me in the past couple of months. I have been wallowing in the thesis swamp and utterly failing to really take in much by way of any information at all about my surroundings.

A little over ninety minutes ago, I got up to unload the dishwasher and generally get ready for bed and incidentally Squashed A Pantry Moth (having finally registered earlier today that they were pantry moths, not just Oh It's Warm In Here And It's Cold Out There, Huh Didn't Think We'd Had That Many Windows Open, and promptly applied poison to the bedroom and study since we weren't In There) and

discovered

the unequivocally breeding colony in one of the kitchen cupboards

now. I grew up with these fuckers in multiple households in the family and I loathe them on a visceral level and on every previous occasion in the past since moving into MY OWN SPACE, THAT I CONTROL, I have spotted them at one and unleashed ruthless chemical warfare within the day.

It took me. seeing two. mating pairs. to realise what was going on. is how out of it I've been.

anyway we've removed or covered all relevant objects/surfaces (... except the bread board, shit, need to remember the breadboard) from/in the kitchen, and gone through the contents of that cupboard THOROUGHLY (a couple of kilos of pulses are now in a binbag on the patio for me to Dispose Of tomorrow)

and also checked the other cupboards in the kitchen that contain food (and also the pantry), which, g-ds willing none of them show any evidence of The Horror, not even the giant sacks of flour

and now I am waiting for A to be done in the bathroom and then I will go into the bathroom and then we will POISON THE FUCK out of the living room/kitchen (it's open plan! it's great!) and retreat to the bedroom and crack a window and (sob) contemplate doing it all again in a week's time

but. but. notwithstanding. apparently localised to one cupboard. and I already had the poison. and we already had Really Useful Boxes.

I'm going to be twitchy for the next month at least but. Pray the g-ds.

Comments

[emperor]

Ugh, moths :(

[kaberett]

house has been emphatically poisoned, and I am in bed and have taken appropriate drugs and am trying to calm down enough to sleep...

[jesse_the_k]

I'm so sorry to hear about $EntomologicalWarfare. I hope you win.

Theoretically, can affected food go in your compost or would that just make the little devils stronger?

[kaberett]

it can indeed and it will, and that's helping some -- my food-waste anxiety is completely fine with the Unambiguously Infested but much less okay with binning the ...probably fine? so having something to do with it that will at least involve it being food EVENTUALLY is helpful.

[alexwlchan]

kill them with fire poison

<3

(edit: not fire. the friendly person from my local fire brigade has turned up to explain that killing things with fire is a bad idea.)

[alexseanchai]

meep

*sends e-huggable-plushies, or something*

[fyreharper]

oh NO D:

[momijizukamori]

/SCREAMS

I wish you all the luck because yeah personal nightmare here (the only worse thing being wool moths which are just as horrifying but twice as hard to get rid of). FWIW I've had very good luck the pheromone traps for pantry moths, which have the advantage of being long-term control + warning, and not poison.

[sporky_rat]

I ....may need the name for those, I can usually get them gone with some hardcore menthol spray but I end up a mental and emotional wreck afterwards (wintergreen menthol, while phenomenal for dealing with bugs, is a scent in the top five to Make My Brain Bad.

(I'd like to avoid that. It's ugly.)

[momijizukamori]

The ones I have are labeled 'The Pantry Pest Trap(tm)' but there's lots of brands available both online and at hardware stores - just try to get ones that cover a bunch of different species. They're basically just glue traps with a little pheromone lure that makes male moths think they are sexy sexy ladies, so they get stuck and die instead of mating and leading to more eggs. They don't kill the larvae so if you've got a bad infestation you need to do some deep cleaning first, but they're good for clearing up anything you missed and making it clearer if you've got new ones coming in (they're good for ~3 months, and they usually fold into little triangles with the glue on the inside so you can just stick them in cupboards and check every so often).

They make similar ones for wool moths, though the lure isn't quite as effective, and they're harder to find - I've had to order on Amazon for those (and the only pesticides that work on wool moths are very toxic to cats, so I have to live with a combo of traps and cleaning and exhausted nihlism)

[davidgillon]

Sending hugs and chemical weapons.

[azurelunatic]

Aaaaaaaaaaa

[vass]

Oh fucking HELL. So much empathy, so much. <33333

Good luck with the poison and the cleanup.

[rmc28]

urrrrgh, power to your poison

[lunabee34]

*hugs and hugs*

[sfred]

Ugh. I'm sorry you're having to deal with this.

[ewt]

arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh I fucking hate pantry moths they are horrid

(Theoretically any starchy thing I think I'm going to have for more than three months gets frozen for 72 hours on coming into the house, but in practice I don't always do this.)

[sylvaine]

😭😭😭 oh nooooo! I hope you can exterminate them ASAP!