Our pantry closet was invaded by weevils. Our gigantic bag of rice from Costco came to harbor an equally gigantic amount of weevils over the last two months. We knew storing the rice in its bag with a chip clip was not a super idea, but our buckets had not arrived and what else could we do? Even if our freezer had been empty, the bag of rice wouldn't have fit in there...As I went to make rice for our super spicy vindaloo curry last night, I discovered the colony. I called to Matt to come see, and he noticed that they had not limited themselves to the bag of rice. No, they were not content and had set out to find tastier eats in our pantry. They made themselves at home on every shelf actually. We immediately took the rice to the outside trash, but I just wasn't up to cleaning out everything else last night.
So, today I set out to de-weevil our goods, and it appears that weevils have pretty good taste. The most surprising find was the falafal mix. I just bought it this week. When I took it out, I noticed it was leaking powder. Odd, I thought. There should be a sealed bag inside my sealed box. So I opened it up and saw the internal bag was punctured with multiple holes.
Crawling out of the holes were weevils. Many weevils. As I looked at the outside of the box again, I noticed the holes on the box as well. (Notice the picture to the right. You can see a couple weevils on the bottom right hand of the picture as well.) It was by far the most infested item after the rice. The next discovery almost as infested? My Indian Masala spice mix. The lid had a little crack and they weeviled their way through. Oi. They like their ethnic foods. Why couldn't they have gone for the tuna that we've had for 3 years and not touched?I threw away almost everything that didn't have a good seal. I vacuumed out all the little buggers I could see. I washed with soap and water. I used 409. And if that wasn't enough, I sought out a do-it-yourself pest control place and found a non-toxic (to humans) spray that would help kill any stragglers I may have missed.
I'm about 1/2 way done putting all my non-infested food back. The upside of this all? My pantry will be sooo clean, good looking, and organized when this is all over.
5 comments:
Yuck. Weevils are no good. But, hey, at least you get a clean pantry in the process. Not a horrible trade-off, I suppose.
Once, when I was at BYU and lived with much-messier-than-me roommates, we got an infestation of ants in our kitchen. Every morning I'd wake up to find a black puddle of ants on the counter. It was so gross. I'd clean out the cupboards nearly every day and installed all sorts of kitchen-safe ant traps thinking I'd finally gotten rid of them, but they kept coming back. Eventually they did go away, but not after we had one of those annoying roommate powwows on the subject of "Clean Up After Yourself In the Kitchen." Bah, no fun.
So, may your weevils be truly gone and and may they never, ever return.
You have such interesting items in your pantry. I wish you lived closer!
that is just GROSS! man I feel your pain! bugs are just GROSS! At least they were small and not roaches!
Matt said the same thing. On his mission he lived in some roach infested places. I'll take this little outbreak of weevils over roaches any day.
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My family was taken by weevils a couple times, but they always snuck in, died, and made a mess with their bodies in everything. I've never seen a living weevil.
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