I'm going to start out by warning you...this is about a bug/moth/larva infestation that makes me sick to my stomach. So if you're eating breakfast or not ready to handle that sort of thing right now, keep on scrolling! This is not for you.
Sunday evening Todd and I go to our friends house for our weekly Sunday Dinner with them. We've been doing this for several months now, and it is so much fun! We spend all week thinking of a theme and dishes to go along with it, cocktails to match, and a dessert to tie it all together. We've tried a lot of new things, made things we've never made, and also stuck to some good old, comfort food classics. These friends are some of our dearest friends, and we decided early on that they would be our "quarantine bubble" friends. One of the silver linings from the upside down year that was 2020...we had to get creative, and think outside of the box, and we brought back the fine art of Sunday dinner, and I love it! Anyways...we go to their house, have a lovely, no sugar, no alcohol (because, still going strong with my goals for January!), dinner, and then come home. I'm changing into PJ's, and doing a few face care treatments (another goal), and I hear Todd downstairs. He's making a lot of strange noises, moving things around, there's some pounding...its just odd. So I go downstairs to see what's going on, he's got a trash bag in one hand, and 3 feet of disinfecting wipes in the other. I ask him what in the heck he's doing, and he says, "we have a problem'.
Uh oh.
Todd's not dramatic AT ALL. In fact, sometimes I beg him to be more dramatic, more emotional. He's just so dang level headed!! But his voice had a tone, and that's how I knew it was bad.
I walk around the corner and into the kitchen and he points up to the ceiling. There are bug larva/worm looking things EVERYwhere. And that's not being dramatic, like I'm good at. ;) Even ask Todd. haha. It was so gross...but about to get even worse. Todd's up on the counters, getting all these nasties off of the ceiling/top of the cabinets, and they just keep coming. Felt like for every 10 he got, 15 more appeared. They were thicker near the pantry, so Todd opened that and starts digging around.
Our pantry isn't super full. Its just Todd and I, and we don't have a ton of food in the house at any given point. We have the things to make meals for that week, and maybe a few extra random things, but I'm not usually stocked enough to just whip something together if a bunch of people stopped by. Unless I got real creative. ;) On the top shelf there was a box of unicorn hot chocolate mix I had gotten forever ago for my friends kids when they came over, a box of rice krispies I like to keep on hand in case I ever find myself "needing" rice krispie treats at any point. I can't reach that shelf, and I never use that shelf. It gets totally overlooked. Shoved way in the back was a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that was opened (it had probably been there since we moved in, just over a year ago, and I kinda remember getting it when we went grocery shopping to stock the new house, and Cindy wanted it for breakfast - she was spending the night and helping us unpack boxes). The thing was CRAWLING with buggy larva, and I lost it. It was so disgusting...I don't wish that on anyone. I wanted to vomit, but knew that would gross me out even more. It was completely foul, and I feel traumatized from even just looking at it. Poor Todd had to touch it!
In efforts to "help" clean up the infestation, I googled what the heck was going on. I couldn't help clean up the larvae without feeling sick, and I felt too bad just scrolling on my phone, trying to wipe the images out of my mind, while Todd was suffering. So I did a deep dive into these nasty little suckers, and from what I can tell, we have Indianmeal Moth, also known as Pantry Pests. They live in rices and grains and sugars, basically anything you have in your pantry. The only thing they can't get into is tin cans. We had to throw out every single thing in our pantry/cabinets. Which makes me sick from all the waste! Luckily, we weren't stocked to the brim with food, so it wasn't that terrible, but still sad none the less. From my readings, they're super common, and everywhere. I was telling LV about it, and she said she had that same thing happen at her house. Factories that process food have a hard time keeping these guys out, and you can even buy something that is contaminated, and it will infest all of your food!
What's crazy to me is Sunday afternoon, didn't see a trace of them anywhere. Go to Sunday dinner, come back, and they are EVERYWHERE. Like they had been growing and festering in that cereal box for who knows how long, and just had to bust out. I've showered 3 times in the last 24 hours, and my skin still feels like its crawling. I close my eyes, and I see those little bugs. All the food I've eaten today (which has all been take out from other places as we have no food in our house currently), I'm checking for these bugs. These dang things really came in all of a sudden, and did a number on us. I'm hoping that I will quickly be able to block this out as a coping mechanism. Pretty bumpy start to the year, but I'm confident it will still turn around!
Okay, I have to stop talking about this now...I feel sick all over again! But, in other news, no sugar has been a piece of cake so far. ;) No whining and complaining about that...yet!
Good night, and don't let the bed bugs bite! ;)
A
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