My Wildlife - Part II

Continued from My Wildlife - Part I

In between vacuuming the ceiling and running the lad from one place to the next, I did a quick internet search for “white worms crawling on the ceiling” It’s surprising how many people have made the same query. This is what I have. The Indian Meal Moth.

The especially disheartening facts about this pest are:

• It is introduced by being brought in with a food product which is already infested.

• This pest may enter food from a store that has an infestation of this insect. The immature stages of this insect may crawl into other food packages thereby introducing Indian Meal Moth into a home or business.

• The larvae are likely to infest: grains, cereals, pastas, chocolate, cornmeal, dried flowers, nuts, spices (red pepper being a favorite) and some herbs.

• They can chew through plastic packaging.

• The adult females lay 100-400 eggs at a time. On food products.

The solution? First, of course, find the infested food and get rid of it. And, for good measure, get rid of anything that would attract these pests, and thoroughly clean all cupboards and cabinets.

And so, after the lad left on his camping trip, I began cleaning out cupboards and filled a few large trash bags until there was nothing left but canned goods. Vacuumed and scrubbed them all.

And still the worms kept coming. Then one came crawling over the top of one of the kitchen cabinets and the light bulb went on. Because, precisely in that spot is where I store my sweet and semi-sweet baker’s chocolate so that cats, dogs, and child can’t find it.

I hauled the coffee table up to the side of the kitchen counter and got up to see what was happening on top of the cupboards. The sight, as they say, defied description. I couldn’t see the two packages of chocolate for the mound of creeping and crawling mass on them. With vacuum nozzle at the ready, I switched it on and sucked ‘em all up.

Gingerly...oh so gingerly, I brought the packages of baker’s chocolate down and opened one in the sink. There was nothing but powdered chocolate left inside. Along with more worms and gobs of their webbing. It was soooo gross! Into another trash bag the chocolate went.

I suspect that was the infested food that started all this. I only bought the chocolate a couple of weeks ago. Nothing else appeared to be infested, but I’m not going through this again. It all goes and I start fresh, with everything new going into glass containers.

So. I climbed back up on the coffee table to continue de-worming the tops of the kitchen cabinets. There were plenty of them. When I couldn’t find another worm, I jumped down off the table. And forgot the vacuum cleaner was right under my feet. I landed on it, twisted my ankle, flipped completely around slamming my back into the knobs on the stove before I landed in a heap wedged in the corner by stove and kitchen sink.

I sat there a moment with a string of simultaneous thoughts running through my mind; i’m okay, nothing feels broken, i can move my leg and wiggle my toes, it hurts, this isn’t how i planned to spend my saturday, hey, wouldja look at that!

Sitting there on the floor brought me eye level with the collection cannister on the bag less vacuum cleaner. By this point there were probably something on the order of 400 worms in there. When the vacuum is on, the detritus spins fantastically fast. Kind of like being in a centrifuge. Do you know what a centrifuge does to 400 worms? It turns them into paste.

Paste.

And I’m sitting there still thinking. How am I going to clean that mess out? Maybe if I stuck it in the dishwasher. Wasn’t it just a weekend ago that I made the claim that any old nasty thing can go in the dishwasher and come out sanitized? Yes, yes I did. But, you know, I take it back.

I scraped it all out with a spatula and deposited it in another small trash bag. And tossed the spatula in with the goo. And soaked the vacuum’s collection cup in bleachy water.

Until it was time to suck up more little white worms that were still appearing from behind the kitchen cabinets. I still don’t know where they came from. Perhaps they took a wrong turn from the top of the cabinet and decided to change course and head for more open areas. Whatever. It was a regular blast.

Three ibuprofen and and ace bandage got me on my feet and I’ve more or less spent the last couple of days looking up at the ceiling. So far, nothing to report. No more worms. No moths yet. Nothing for them to eat in the cupboards or anyplace else that I can think of. So even if a moth or two or a half dozen result, they and their offspring will starve to death if my trusty vac and I don’t get them first.

This saga ends at least temporarily, but I may have been permanently put off food. The good news is...if you put your chocolate and grainy food products in the freezer for 3 days, it kills the Indian Meal Moth eggs. If you don’t mind eating Indian Meal Moth eggs. Of course, since they are nearly microscopic, you’d never know for sure.