You thought I was such a peaceful, nonviolent person. I am, or I try to be. But I have my limits. Pantry moths have always pushed my limits, and lately they have made the Hermits’ Rest much less restful.
We always have a few pantry moths, because they come in with food. We try to seal or put in the fridge things we know they love, but we mess up. I’m just not great at cleaning every square inch of pantry, and some containers I think are airtight turn out otherwise. Sigh. There’s a reason, says the Wikipedia article on Indian meal moths:
The larvae of this species have the ability to bite through plastic and cardboard so even sealed containers may be infested.
Oh. Turns out my nemesis is not from India. There’s something called Indian meal. I didn’t know that, either. It loves grains, nuts, flour, bread and cloth. No wonder moths showed up in the bedroom closet..
The issue is that some dog food bag that Lee bought had a lot of moths in it. And they bred like crazy. We’d be watching television with moths distracting us. I’d go to bed and have to slap moths attracted to my phone. They were in the shower. And the toilet (at least those were dead). They were everywhere. Yuck.
My friend Pamela told me about a product that worked for her, but I kept forgetting to order it. Last week I finally remembered. Every day I told the family the moth death was coming. Yes, I wanted to kill. Not very Buddhist of me.
But I’m willing to give up a bit of karma to live a home life with only an occasional pantry moth. I opened the box and set out the traps. Apparently, sexy moth pheromones immediately began wafting around the pantry, kitchen, living room…and everywhere.
Interesting fact: the sexy traps only attract male moths. But without the males, they can’t breed. The literature said that we’d still see some females and new ones after the last eggs hatch, but soon we’d be ok.
The results have been better than I expected. I don’t see a flutter of moths every time I walk into a room. The bathroom mirror has zero resting moths. The television is watchable (unless Dallas Cowboys are playing).
This is only in 24 hours! Dear readers, if you have even an average pantry moth problem, clean the cabinets then order Dr. Killigan’s. He also has a product for the evil moths that eat wool, say, your handmade socks and the yarn to make them. I have experience with these, too. I bought a few of these murder by smell devices, just in case the ones upstairs are that kind.
I really didn’t expect such as improvement so quickly. I’ve only seen a couple of moths today. What a relief. I’m a killer, I know. But I’m pretty sure there are plenty of others out there, probably in another bag of dog food.
The Hermits' Rest 