These things appeared in friends flat. What are they?

  • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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    6 days 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.

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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      6 days 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
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        6 days 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
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          6 days 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.

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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      6 days 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.

      • Fosheze@lemmy.world
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        6 days 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.

  • Anna@lemmy.ml
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    6 days ago

    The kind I don’t want anywhere near me or any my belongings and most definitely nowhere near my food.

  • tobogganablaze@lemmus.org
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    6 days ago

    I’m quite outside of my expertise here, but I think it might be a mealworm. A beetle larvae. That would technically make it not a maggot (which are fly larvae).

    But it’s just a guess.

    @PonyOfWar@pawb.social’s suggestion fits better.