Pantry Weevils

2/23/2014

Bugs - hate 'em!  Doesn't matter what kind, all I know is they don't belong in my house.  A trail of ants in the kitchen during summer makes me crazy (which I know is a short trip!).  This week's problem is weevils that lurk unknowing in the pantry.  They love cereal, grains, flour, pretty much anything that isn't in a can or a glass container.

How do these pesky devils get in the house?  Orkin tells me that they generally start in the store where you buy groceries.  You don't notice them obviously, these suckers are very small.  Once they get in the pantry, they run wild and contaminate food.

As you all know I keep a very well stocked pantry and deep in the dark corners of my top shelf, the little weevils were getting into everything.  How did I find them?  I went to get a Jiffy cornbread mix to use in a recipe.  What a shock when I opened the box - there was more than just the mix inside.  After seeing bugs in that box, I started taking everything out of the pantry.  Box by box of cereal, crackers and dried mixes, among other things, when opened were a playground for these little pests.

Before I knew it I pulled everything, and I do mean everything, out of the pantry.  I opened box after box of food and it took mere seconds of looking to realize that I had a full blown invasion of my food.  I filled five (yes five) large black trash bags of contaminated food.  If you don't notice these little guys, and you know as well as me, that when you open a box, you aren't expecting to find "visitors" inside.  Since these bugs are very small and lightly colored, they would be very easy to overlook.  Because who actually looks inside a box before using the product.  Um, I'm thinking nobody.

Jeff and I went out and bought a large number of plastic canisters to hold food that doesn't turn around quickly.  Some food such as Triscuits or my saltine crackers, get used up quickly and don't linger in the pantry.

In preparation for Orkin's visit, I emptied out the pantry and I had cans, jars, etc. on my formal dining room table, the buffet, the kitchen table and every available counter space in the kitchen.  Having all of this stuff sitting around really put my OCD in overdrive.

The pantry has now been sprayed in the cracks and crevices and we have a bait trap that attracts these bugs,  I'm not sure if it's the male weevil or the female that likes what it smells inside the gluey trap, and I don't care.  

After losing so much food, I'll be sure to be more diligent about looking inside the boxes of foods that I bring into the house.  I do have to say that after removing so much food, my pantry looks beautiful.  Before Orkin came out, I vacuumed and washed the entire pantry.  Confession: I don't scrub the pantry on a regular basis, it's just a pain and a lot of work to drag everything down and then put it back.  

I'm pretty sure with the poison sprayed into the cracks and crevices plus the "I'm waiting for you big guy" bug trap, I shouldn't (fingers crossed) have a problem in the future.  Even though I think I'll be find going forward, it is likely that I will have a peek inside the boxes of food that I bring home from the store!

P