These things appeared in friends flat. What are they?

  • Fosheze@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    Grain moth larva. Good luck. The damn things are a pain to get rid of once you have them. You’ll want to pitch any food that isn’t 100% air tight sealed (bags or boxes of cereal, rice, flour, sugar, noodles, etc.) and then clean out any cabinets really well to make sure you get rid of as many eggs as possible. After that make sure you don’t leave any food unsealed for the next few months because odds are they will keep popping back up ocasionally for a bit and if they can get into anything when they do then the infestation starts all over. As far as infestations go they aren’t the worst to deal with but they are anoying.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      I just dealt with them a couple of months ago, absolute fucking nightmare. What solved it in the end was parasitic wasps - you can order them online. I received 3 letters in the mail a couple of weeks apart, each containing a small paper card with parasitic wasp eggs, which you put close to the source of larvae. The wasps lay their eggs inside the larvae eggs, but you’ll need to use all three letters to get all larvae throughout their cycle.

      Sounds weird as fuck, but immediately solved the problem.

      • JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        … How did you get rid of the wasps? Or is it a ‘they live here now, Bob’s the king of section 3-b’ sort of thing?

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          2 months ago

          Getting rid of the wasps was easy, the frogs took care of them. The annoying part was getting rid of the snakes…

          Nah, the wasps are tiny, I could barely see specks of dust moving around. They just died off after the larvae were gone.

      • Fosheze@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        Gonna be honest chief, I would sooner burn my house down than live with wasps.

        But thinking about it, I’m willing to bet that house centipedes would clear them up too. Those voracious little buggers eat everything.

          • Fosheze@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            2 months ago

            Oh, cool! When you said parasitic wasp my brain immediately pictured a tarantula hawk wasp.

            • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              2 months ago

              Anything fruitfly and above would have meant I’ll just move, but yours sounds so much more horrifying. Oh god.

            • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              edit-2
              2 months ago

              The parasitic ones (well, parasitoid since they live free as adults) are very different, sometimes literally microscopic, and never harmful to humans AFAIK.

              Gruesomely fascinating and widely studied, though. Relevant recent XKCD.

    • gearheart@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      I hear they are very nutricious 🤔… Everything is so expensive now. So… Endless food source? Shittylpt?

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      Not just sealed. They will get into sealed cardboard boxes and through thin plastic. Like bags, forget it. Everything either needs to go into glass, metal, the fridge, or thick plastic, like tupperware. Also they will eat stuff you’d never expect, like spices, even hot pepper.

      • Hugin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        Yup. I had an infestation thar took months to get rid of. Turns out they were in an old bag of dried peppers.

        • blackbrook@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          I’m not giving anyone orders, just trying to convey how ridiculously anal you have to be about it get rid of them. I went through several rounds of “surely these things will be ok, they aren’t open / in a ziplock / not something it would possibly want to eat” repeatedly failing to get rid of them before finally putting EVERYTHING into glass, Tupperware or the fridge.

          A flamethrower might work too.

    • QuizzaciousOtter@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      I just fought them off in my apartment. Everything they said is correct. I just want to add that I bought some kind of spray to kill them and it was very effective. Got rid of them in two applications.