Indian Meal Moth--getting rid of them the cheap way

Confession--

After a two-week stay at a friend's home, I have been battling Indian Meal Moths that hitchhiked home with me. I have put out a product called Pantry Pest Trap that uses a sex attractant to lure the male moth. It works. I can highly recommend the Pantry Pest Trap that I found at Lowe's. However, two of the traps cost $6. I have bought 3 packages for a total of $18. By accident, I found a cheaper solution.

I am all for cheap if it works. Neither of these two bought solutions has a poison, so the difference is in the price.

In the meantime--

A newer pest has arrived. Common house flies. I was going nuts because I will not abide them flying about my kitchen. It seems I spent most of my time swatting flies, cleaning up where I swatted them, covering food I was preparing so no fly could land on it.

Finally, I did something I thought I would never do--bought Victor Fly Catcher--strips that hang. I paid $1 for four strips at Lowe's and am using only one. This is really nasty looking with flies stuck to it. Only lazy people have flypaper, I thought!

Actually, I have been places where flies crawled all over the food. Those people had numerous strips of flypaper hanging around the room. I never eat food in this type home!

In the meantime I am like a crazy woman, stalking flies in my kitchen. If they get cool and land on a window or anywhere, I vacuum them. That is a good feeling, sucking up a fly that will die from the air drying it out...oh. so. cruel. And, I really don't care!

Since there was always one fly I could not swat, I decided on flypaper/strips. Even if I killed the last one, another appeared in a few hours. My torture-by-fly just continued, unabated. Hey, I am talking about me being tortured by the presence of flies.

Finally, the place the flies were coming in has been located and plugged up for good. But, it's summer and the fly paper will stay.

If you have never seen flypaper or fly strips, you have missed nothing. They are long strips of sticky brown paper that hang in your space. Their sole purpose is to trap flies that land on them. A hanging strip with hundreds of dead flies stuck to it.

Since I did not want anyone to see this, I hung the strip between the refrigerator and a cabinet. Every few days I check it. It suddenly occurred to me the strip was catching fruit flies and Indian Meal Moths. Not one house fly has been caught. Okay, I can deal with anything being caught, especially the moths.

As I look at the $6 traps ($3 apiece) and a quarter strip from a $1 pack of four, I think $.25 is better than $3! Both catch the same amount of insects.

While I will not quit buying the sex-lure moth trap, I will supplement the trap with the cheap flypaper strip.

This has been a most embarrassing post to write, admitting I would put a fly strip in my home. To me it smacks of laziness and filth...oh well.

Has anyone tried the fly paper for anything but flies?

Possible Food Waste--Beware

Larvae on the rim of a storage jar, horizontal in the glass threads.
white stringy stuff  on each side of one larvae-- pupae vacated.
No wasted food occurred here, but possibility without protection.
Can you see how they traveled round the threads and the flat lid
finally formed an impenetrable barrier?
Never use a peanut butter jar with plastic lid and no additional rubber barrier!

In the ongoing fight against pantry moths I have been cleaning as I could for months. It is slow, but I have found nothing in much of my food. On the contrary, I find the moths or larvae or pupa  in other places besides inside  foodstuffs. However, spilled food can be a lure. We may not be able to see the powdered milk on the rim of the jar, but the moths can detect food.

By the way, I put a plastic glass into the jar in order that the larvae show up better in the picture. The powdery stuff is powdered milk inside.

There was half a cup or less powdered milk in this half gallon Ball canning jar with a previously used lid. I use jars to protect all sorts of foods. I had not opened this jar in ages, so I decided to use the rest of the powdered milk for the hens' food in the morning and put pasta in the clean jar. I knew that any crevice, even under the labels on jars could be the place an adult moth would lay eggs. Still, I was surprised.

 

After I dumped the milk in a bowl, I examined the bit of powdered milk for larvae or pupa. None were in the milk. I took the jar, inverted it and put it under a fast stream of water in the sink. The larvae was stuck to the jar rim. As the water warmed, the larvae wiggled. Finally the larvae was washed away. It was a disgusting but enjoyable chore.

 

The Pantry Pest traps only target the males. A study said only one in eight males (think this was figure) who came near the trap, entered. That's discouraging.

 

Slowly, I am ridding myself of these horrors. Between the vacuum cleaner sucking them from the air and my electrified Bug Zapper, I am winning, but slowly. I am not capable of a whole kitchen cleaning right now or in the last year or so. I am sure I kill them in one place only to have them hatch someplace else and move to the cleaned place....sigh. Charlie is coming next week,; he will come and take away some foodstuffs and items from decluttering. Plus, he is going to repair things in the house. Everyone cross your fingers he comes. 

If you visit anyone with pantry moths, be very careful. I brought these home after a ten-day stay with someone who was storing bags of beans and rice in galvanized garbage cans in the kitchen. I opened the cans after seeing dozens of moths in the kitchen and far in the other rooms in the house. Hundreds flew out. ACK! My purse and luggage brought them to my home, despite my attempts and valiant efforts to shake thing out and launder them once I was home.

From now on, I will examine each canning jar used for dry storage, taking the lid off and examining the lid and ring, plus the glass threads. I really don't want to provide safe harbor for this pest.

 

Your turn

Have you fought pantry moths of any kind? Other than empty every cabinet and peel off the labels on cans, what methods did you use to get rid of these? Was emptying the cabinets your only recourse? 

It Works!

Since I seemed not to be (zap) winning the war on pantry moths, I bought a bug zapper several months ago. I decided to get a handheld BUG ZAPPER. I loaded it up with two AA batteries. It did not faze the bugs.



I asked Exbf to let me touch it to him while it was on. He took it and held it himself while he turned it on. Then, I convinced him to see if it made the hair on his arms feel (zap) (zap) zap) tingly. It did not. He refused to turn it on and put his tongue to it. I begged.

Mark declared it broken after similar tests. Finally, I touched it. Nothing. He had owned one that actually worked until his children over-played with it.

Driven mad by these moths, I saw another shipment of BUG ZAPPERS at the store and bought another. Yes, I have been stopping and zapping bugs as I type. One was a fruit fly that had been trying to get on my mouth. Yuck. The others were pantry moths I saw flying. Never before have I batted 1000 when assaulting the pantry moths. They appear to have found every nook and cranny and the carpet. They cannot fly well, so their path is erratic. I cannot keep up when swatting.

This is quite a spectacular little tennis-racket-looking instrument of bug death. There is a loud fire-cracker pop pop, lots of smoke and hissing and the disintegrating moth parts hit again and again casing more pophisses. Master of Death that I am, this is quite thrilling. I must admit that at first the burning stench in my nostrils was off-putting, to say the least. Now, I have grown to enjoy it since it represents defeat, victory, a win

In the kitchen I tried it on a few fruit flies. It sounded like the smallest of firecrackers and did not smell at all. As a matter of fact, I just used this like a magic wand through fruit flies, and it repeatedly popped as it got them all!

This seems like something that might come in handy outdoors during dusk when mosquitoes are abundant and insistent that I let them sip. I am so excited to finally feel I can win the war on moths.


Your turn
Have you ever used one of these? Did you like ti?  Have you even seen one? Obviously, they have been out for years before I ever saw one.  It works on the order of the ones for outdoors, and sounds just as barbaric.

Bugs/Insects/pests in the Grocery Store

Several times at Walmart, I have noticed pantry moths in the dog food and birdseed areas. One day, there were about 20 moths flitting around the dry dog food. Of course, these are being spread to other bags that did not have a moth problem. These will get into packages without food. Eventually, they can be in the grocery area of the store. GAH!

Have you ever noticed pantry moths in your store near dog food or anything?