we had some like that. turned out they'd made a home in a package of crackers or something like that. After disposing of it, they were gone within a week.
Not to be all obvious n' shit, but I don't suppose you've considered bug spray? Bug bomb the place.
Alternatively, take some with you down to the local garden store and show them to people who look like they might know how to get rid of bugs. Eventually someone will recognize them and suggest a remedy, but dollars to donuts it's the one I already suggested.
You could also get rid of your cats temporarily and introduce a variety of bug eating lizards into the household. Once the bugs are gone, bring back the cats to deal with the lizards.
Find an autistic kid who really enjoys the crunchyness of the bugs and set him or her to the task of crunching all the bugs.
Burn the place down.
Yep. I don't know what their real name is, but I've always called them 'flour bugs'. They're living in something dry in a cupboard -- could be flour, or cornmeal, or crackers, or an old box of cereal, or some kind of mix. You need to go through your cupboards and throw old stuff out, and anything in that category that you're keeping, at least open it up and look to make sure it doesn't have bugs.
Sounds like grain weevils.
http://www.springhalen.dk/kornsnudebiller.JPG
6 is the least surprising comment so far today.
What LB said. Weevils like flour products.
8: And are very good at getting into any container that isn't really, really well sealed.
But they're not terribly hard to get rid of -- once you've thrown out the food they're living in, they're pretty much gone.
The lazy way to do this is to throw out everything plausible in the kitchen, and not replace it for a week or so. That should get rid of them, and then you can go shopping again.
the ones we had recently weren't weevils (rounder shaped, didn't burrow afaics) and as geographically close to hbgb, i wouldn't be surprised if t'were the same. But remedy is identical.
I prefer weevils to grain moths. Those fuckers just will. not. die.
erm, these ones liked oil too, fwiw.
You may find that there are two different species of weevils infesting the house, and you'll have to live with lesser of the two.
Liked the cat's pills? Maybe a "drugstore beetle", which is sometimes called a weevil, but is not a genuine weevil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drugstore_beetle
Better pic of a grain weevil for comparison. Good old Wikipedia to the rescue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_weevil
16: Hmmm, probably a variant of those, yes. Very non-weevil like features, but similar habits.
Drugstore beetles look like the 'flour bugs' I know. (And they are noticeably crunchy when squished. I'd bet that's what Heebie's got.)
Yes, crunchy. And they like warmth and high humidity (e.g. here, 10 months + of the year)
Yeah, getting rid of moths is a total hassle. I get really obsessed when I see a random moth in our house.
Hmm, they don't look like grain weevils, from the pictures gswift linked. Slightly more like drugstore beetles, except for the "actual size" subtitle.
22: The "actual size" there bears no relation to the ones I'm describing, that look a bit like that and are sized perhaps 2mm max. Also, it says they like pharmacuticals (hence the name) which would explain the cat pill thing...
Oh man, I hope you don't have drugstore beetles. My mom sent us a ristra a few years back that turned out to be infested with the little bastards; they colonized the rest of the pantry pretty rapidly, and it took us forever to get rid of them. They got into sealed spice jars and ate the middles out of red pepper flakes and even set up a small but thriving outpost in the microwave. What the hell, bugs?
I still have to check myself every time I add flaxseed to bread dough. Gosh, I think, flaxseeds look like tiny beetles. Doo de doo, let's add a pile of them to the mixing bowl. Gaaaah, there are beetles in the bowl! Every blessed time. My brain: not so smart.
Anyway, IME your options are (1) giving the house an insanely good scrub-down, and then doing it again when the bastards reappear in a couple of weeks, and (2) calling the exteriminator. (1) leads inexorably to (2), but with more cursing and wasted weekends.
Right. If you read the text, it says 3mm, which seems a little big to me for the ones I know, but not wildly too big.
25: Oh, man, that sucks. Funny, though, I've never had that much trouble getting rid of them -- I've had maybe three or four infestations in my life, counting at my parents apartment when I was a kid, and throwing stuff out worked like a charm.
my experience matched 27, too.
hope you're not stuck with 25, heebie!
Not to be all obvious n' shit, but I don't suppose you've considered bug spray? Bug bomb the place.
Not to be all preachy n' shit, but with a couple of indoor cats and a baby (not to mention heebie herself and Jammies), why would she want to douse the entire house in poison?
Speaking of weevils, an effective way of keeping them out of your flour is to put a bay leaf or two in there. Fresh seems to work better than dried, and neither seems to affect the test of the flour in any way.
Throwing stuff out definitely helped; the population abundance was a sawtooth curve. Being packrats by nature and stingy to boot, we were just really slow to understand how much had to be thrown out, and how far from impregnable glass jars actually are, so we'd have a massive weekend pantry purge but neglect to (say) individually inspect the teabags for beetle-sized holes, and a few weeks later we'd have to go through the whole thing again. Good times!
29: To get rid of the bugs?
Bug bombing is a drastic measure, but it's quite possible to do it without endangering anyone's health. Other options are preferable, but poison has its points.
29: Eh. I grew up in a house built on a scorpion hill. Visits from the exterminator were a regular part of the domestic routine. I get that it's not ideal, but it's not like irreversible neurodamage is the inevitable result.
33: really isn't the first resort, though. Or shouldn't be, at any rate.
32: Ours disappeared after throwing out a box (full of them) and maybe 2-3 other things in that cupboard. That was it.
Of all the sensationalistic Shirley Jackson ripoffs I've encountered, I liked House on Scorpion Hill the least.
The lazy way to do this is to throw out everything plausible in the kitchen, and not replace it for a week or so.
It also helps to keep anything they might infest in the freezer for some period of time. We've kept our flour in the freezer ever since a mealy moth infestation (maybe ten years ago now. It scarred).
Setting off a bug bomb is a very different thing from having an exterminator come and apply poison to specific areas in specific amounts. Also, what 35 said.
36: I gather from the thread so far that it's our experience that was the outlier. Which is good! For us, everything the bugs might infest = everything but canned goods; there's just no way to fit that all in the freezer.
I have no experience with bug bombs---is that the sort of thing where you have to move the whole family out for a few days? If so, yeah, not to be done at the drop of a hat.
Find an autistic kid
Does anyone else always picture Bongo, Binky's one-eared illegitimate son, thinking "Me? artistic?" with a note of pride in his facial expression?
I get that it's not ideal, but it's not like irreversible neurodamage is the inevitable result.
It's hard to know, and when there are other options to try first . . .
Plus, I'd just hate to see heebie take any chances with Hawaiian Punch. She's just so damn cute, and weird tremors or twitching or the like would detract from that.
Jammies is pretty adorable too.
Of course, I haven't experienced HP's infamous neck cheese.
What with that and the swarms of drugged-out insects, I'm beginning to get a little leery of visiting the geebie household.
I don't think the bugs are stemming from Hawaii's neck cheese. But we'll try to bathe her bi-weekly to be sure.
44: Just put her in the freezer for a while. Or put some bay leaves in her neck folds. Hopefully things won't get so bad that you have to throw her out.
Won't the bay leaves affect the way she tastes?
46: No, she'll still go right on using her tongue to taste, just like before.
Hopefully things won't get so bad that you have to throw her out.
Don't throw her out! Shady deals made without any chance of accountability are the reason the gods gave us craigslist, FFS. Just put "neck cheese free" in the ad and you've got plenty of semantic wiggle room to get out of any accusations of fraud.
It really is weird how long it takes before a baby can develop BO. I mean, any baby without a crap-filled diaper smells good or like sour milk. On the other hand, three year old boys get ripe quickly. I can't place when the switch took place. Smelly feet come with walking in shoes, but other than that, I can't recall when the odor switch happens.
People consumed insect as a minor part of the diet and as household companions for millenia.
I saw nothing in the Drugstore beetle or wheat weevil articles to presume toxicity with ingestion. Crunchy.
Alternatively, if hb has to get rid of them, she might borrow a plastic backyard pool for herself and loved ones, and simply open the windows of the house. Nothing is gonna survive this year's Texas summer.
Because there are never any bugs in the South.
51:Few places in the South have 100 days of 100 degrees, with humidity.
And I was kidding, and you are always hostile.
I was kidding, and you are always hostile
Mouseover text for the late Unfogged (PBUI).
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"But I think that may be a change for the better" ...MY
Better that we can't see the class struggle and hegemony or better that we are no longer looking for it? Because the hegemony hasn't gone away.
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I prefer weevils to grain moths. Those fuckers just will. not. die.
Fucking tell me about it.
OT: LB's secret identity revealed?
59: Wow. Elizabeth has some serious issues. And not just with nicknames:
"And please don't call the office and not leave a message. My colleague told me you called while I was away. ... I do sometimes leave my desk."
I also love this:
As for your meeting request, who is the point of contact for this meeting? If it's not you, then I need to know who because it's very time-consuming to deal with a lot of people for one meeting.
You know what's also time-consuming? Spending 19 e-mails going on about how one is to be addressed.
Anyone else feeling glad not to work in DC right now? I wonder how the representative feels about his office running with that sort of, er, `professionalism'
63: The piece says something about an apology's being issued, which suggests that "don't embarrass the boss" is an even more important rule in DC than "lobbyists must suck up to staffers."
38: We've kept our flour in the freezer ever since a mealy moth infestation (maybe ten years ago now. It scarred).
Yeah, the whatever-they-are moths are just evil. They can crawl up into and around the spirals in a screw-top jar lid, and therefore into the jar! They adore anything carbohydrate-like. You thought jars would help? Silly you!
Having had to toss the entirety of my pantry two or three times over the years, the firm household rule is now: you see one of those things flitting about, you hunt it down and kill it. And we now keep the flour, cornmeal, and related things, in the freezer.
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Shiner Black is like a more drinkable Guinness.
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Apparently someone has scrubbed "Petey's" comments from Yglesias's Atlantic archives. Apparently only those from the primary season, those critical of Obama. Not yet sure if this applies to, for instance, "petey"'s comments at Ezra's and elsewhere, or to other commenter's criticisms of Obama around the web. Not sure if this is done on private initiative, or at the behest/command of the White House. Not sure if the FOIA applies, or if the various secrecy cases are applicable.
Very interesting. Obama may be fun after all.
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Not sure if this is done on private initiative, or at the behest/command of the White House.
Not sure if Michelle O. killed Vince Foster with her wicked Wing Chun; it would be irresponsible not to speculate.
If anyone official is bothering at all about Petey, we're truly fucked by a cruching onrush of triviality.
Bob, I know it's hard out there for a troll, but abandoning subtlety isn't going to help.
71:How about irony?
Or are we not allowed to make jokes about paranoia?
Petey's arguments about Obama during the primary were mostly on economic grounds. He was an Edwards supporter, like me. He was the strongest proponent od the idea that Obama was not an economic liberal. Ok, Newberry was tougher.
Obama has already gone after Medicare and Medicaid; Orszag is always talking about Social Security. No tax increases on the rich in sight. "Disappointing" is an understatement.
When the next dip in our longgggg recession comes, and it will come, Obama may be looking at multi-trillion dollar deficits. How Reaganite will he go?
No, not Reaganite! Evil destroyer of progressive will!
Ham-Love I'm not sure I understand the objection:is it that our government would never abuse executive power in the name of secrecy and manipulation of public opinion for policy objectives...or is that Obama would never do such a thing?
Is Glenn Greenwald over at the left?
Of course Obama and the gummint would abuse executive power to manipulate public opinion. I'm not completely naive.
But Petey has epsilon impact on public opinion, and if anyone in the administration knows who Petey is, they certainly don't care what he's posting.
The most likely explanation is that an anti-comment-spam measure caught some of Petey's comments accidentally. The next most likely explanation is that someone at Yggyland luvs Obama so much they took it upon themselves to erase some of Petey's comments.
Frankly, my Bayesian analysis suggests it's ten times more likely that you hacked the site and deleted the comments yourself, than that the adminstration requested it.
I hear that Obama took his girls to get ice cream at the very moment that Petey's comments were being scrubbed.
Bob, if you want to talk conspiracy, let's talk about this U.S. propaganda from March 2009.
Seeing Arabic-language leaflets that were dropped in Baghdad makes me feel so sad. Those must have been months in the preparation. One more sunk cost that psychologically contributed to the "inevitable" juggernaut of war. How on earth do we derail that the next time?
76:Better.
I have more humour about this stuff than people give me credit for.
How on earth do we derail that the next time?
I was born during a stupid pointless brutal war and I think I will die during a stupid pointless brutal war.
Ha Ha.
Pancake mix? I feel that I must paraphrase Mark Bittman:
"Americans must have felt sadly alienated from their kitchens for this product ever to gain a foothold in the market."
I mean, it's like 5 dry ingredients and 2 wet ones, all of which are almost certainly in your home at all times.
????
Uh, 79 looks monstrous in light of 78. But not in light of Obama taking his beautiful girls out for ice cream. So please choose your lighting charitably.
75: I think a more likely suspect than Obama is Edwards himself. Seriously, Petey is so smarmy that he made it harder for me to support Edwards. It didn't matter by the time primaries got to my state, but still. With supporters like that, who needs detractors?
Yeah, he has a sense of humor. He can be witty and funny, or at least reasonable, about issues other than John Edwards. Good for him.
JRoth, we may all die in a stupid pointless brutal war, but at least our pancakes won't me mediocre for no good reason.
Wise man, that Bittman. Funny taste in hats.
Shiner Black is like a more drinkable Guinness.
With all due respect, p.a., statements like that make me think that you shouldn't be allowed within five feet of any beer from this point forward.
to be fair, M/tch, in some benighted parts of the world, the only guinness available is stale, in cans. That could skew results.
Wait, it would be even worse? Perish the thought.
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Looking at the pictures of my high school reunion that are popping up on everyone's Facebook pages (which I did not attend), I am convinced that I went to a freakish school where nearly everyone was scarily attractive. That, or my standards of beauty have decline tremendously since my entrance into academia.*
*Actually, I suspect it is because there's considerable overlap between hot and popular, and the popular are largely who end up going to reunions.
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84: you do know that p.a. lives near Austin, i.e. in a place where Guiness can be had on tap, in bottles, in the nitro cans, etc? Maybe you missed his pseud change a while back?
Anyone else feeling glad not to work in DC right now?
Please don't confuse working in D.C. with being part of the clusterfuck on the Hill (and K Street).
Hey Kraab! What are you doing up so late?
Wait, M/lls, are you saying that the problem is denigration of Guinness? I thought you were making fun of p.a. for praising Shiner Black.
Everyone I know with strong opinions about beer thinks Guinness is mediocre.
Shiner Black is mediocre. It's not really anything like Guiness though, other than a vague resemblance in colo(u)r. That's what I was making fun of.
A really good Guiness is one of the world's great beers. It's just hard to find a really good Guiness in most places.
So now you know: not everyone you know with strong opinions about beer thinks Guinness is mediocre.
Pretend I spelled "Guinness" correctly those first two times in 91.
Shiner Black tastes very much like the mediocre syrup that one would want most likely pour on pancakes made from a mix.
Maybe you missed his pseud change a while back?
Indeed.
90
Shiner black, also mediocre. So it's a wash.
Also, fair enough SK.
the bock is not bad for hot weather though.
Aside from the Shiner Black (which I have never tasted) bit, I endorse 91.
89: Commenting on Unfogged, apparently.
95 is correct. Though the bock is also too sweet.
How have you come to be so familiar with the Shiner ouvre, ari? Are they shipping it out of state now, or have you been spending some time in Texas recently?
guiness is surprisingly variable. 91 gets it right enough that I think i've given up trying to find one.
kobe is counting better than M/tch tonight.
100: Oh, right. Never mind.
102: When I was in Edinburgh I knew Irish students who would, upon entering a pub they hadn't been in before, look carefully at the glasses of patrons who had ordered Guinness and, based upon the pattern of the rings of foam left on the side of the glass as the beer was consumed, decide whether the Guinness there was worth ordering.
Are they shipping it out of state now
Shiner's widely available in Virginia (the Bock, nothing else that I've seen) and, meh, kind of overly sweet for my tastes. Fat Tire's purportedly coming here soon, too, but I heard that's because they were bought by someone much, much bigger.
Actually, I rather liked Shiner Bock (probably last had it in the mid '80s, though). And I also recall that it seemed like they must not have had great consistency and quality control. But a favorite of mine at the time.
106 I've heard of timing a pull or two used for this purpose also.
107 was not to imply that Fat Tire's from Texas; people here just freak out about it.
101: I lived in Louisiana for three years, you know, back in the day. And I still go there opretty regularly. Plus, I think I drank Shiner occasionally when we lived in Oklahoma. Norman: Paris on the South Canadian!
And I also recall that it seemed like they must not have had great consistency and quality control.
It's pretty consistent these days. As Ari notes, a little on the sweet side.
but I heard that's because they were bought by someone much, much bigger.
That's usually a bad sign.
St. Ambrose has a couple decent ones, don't know how far afield they get though.
That's usually a bad sign.
Hm. I can't find any confirmation of the Fat Tire story. Could have just been a rumor, but it came from the dude at the local beer specialty shop.
111: But isn't the Shiner Black very recent?
115: I think Ari has only commented on the bock (being sweet)
113: do you mean St. Arnold?
I've found a cask-conditioned version of their Elissa IPA a couple of times here in Austin and it's been great.
115: I don't really know. But I just had it in NOLA. Over beignets, as god intended.
115: At the R Bar, to be precise, where I reminisced about my youth.
118: whups!
do you mean St. Arnold?
Yes, yes I do. That IPA is good. They've a bunch of decent beers, actually.
So how's NOLA doing these days? Speaking of beignets, the summer after Katrina Sir Kraab and I were on a trip back from Florida with some friends and we stopped in New Orleans to look around. One really striking thing was that the Cafe du Monde had about ten customers and scores of empty tables and it was damned depressing.
I don't know how I got Ambrose/Arnold swapped around.
St. Ambroise is a nice stout we used to have on tap at [graduate university]. I suspect that's where it came from
122: It's pretty grim, all things considered. The most devastated areas are still wastelands, and the Quarter (and Marigny), as you experienced, is much emptier than it used to be. The downturn is going to be especially brutal there, as people are traveling less, and the city doesn't really have an industry to sustain it other than tourism. The port, as I understand it, never recovered from the hurricane. Oh, and the cost of real estate has skyrocketed. Like I said: grim.
Oh, and the cost of real estate has skyrocketed.
I don't follow.
I've heard that. I was there in late January or early Feb. of that year; it was a mess but not surprising, and there were signs of recovery. The quarter had been cleaned up and places like Cafe du Monde were operating --- but if it was mostly empty the season could explain some of that.
Much sadder to hear how grim it is now, at least then there was a feeling, however misplaced, of having turned the corner.
I don't follow.
I think it's related to this:
The most devastated areas are still wastelands
What don't you follow? NOLA used to be an unbelievably cheap place to live. But in the aftermath of the storm, prices went way up and have stayed relatively high. For a while, it seemed like this was happening because of a flood of federal dollars, which then drew transient workers who needed places to live. Then, some of those workers stayed, driving up housing prices. But now, it just seems like the worst housing in the city hasn't been rebuilt and never will be, which has created a crunch that reverberates throughout the market. Or so said a city planner I talked to.
Anyway, it's not cheap to live there any more, meaning that many of the artists and musicians are moving on.
126: The quarter, like Uptown, was easy to clean up. In fact, all of the high ground did just fine in both storms. But the low-lying areas don't seem likely ever to recover. Which may be for the best -- at least environmentally speaking. The social catastrophe is another story.
129: Yeah. I was being a dope. Of course there are fewer places to live now.
130: right, clearly the quarter etc. were not so hard hit. If you were there within 6 months or so though, it seemed like maybe the worst was over. People (locals) I talked to weren't to cynical about it. Not exactly upbeat, by feeling like maybe they'd pull it off even without much help.
I can't imagine they've maintained that attitude, but I haven't been back recently.
131: No, I wasn't being very clear. And honestly, the mechanics of housing market there elude me. It seems weird that prices are up even though half the city has disappeared. I guess demand is still outstripping supply or something.
132: Lots of fatalism, that's my sense of things.
133: This was the scene in part of the Lower Ninth in 2007 when I visited.
Plus, I think I drank Shiner occasionally when we lived in Oklahoma. Norman: Paris on the South Canadian!
I too have drank Shiner Bock in Norman. It and Bud Light were the two beers we could get in an ice bucket on that ill-fated wedding weekend last year. My 36 hours in OK were pretty interesting, yes they were. The hotel we stayed at was called the Sooner Legends. Each room was decorated in honor of one purportedly legendary OU Sooners player. While there, I gathred that it is imperative to beat the hell out of Texas.
Lots of fatalism, that's my sense of things.
Mine too (but all 2nd hand info). When I was there in early 2006, it was at least tinged with hopeful, seemed to me.
you've long been to get Shiner of all varieties in NC. Fat Tire, too.
While there, I gathred that it is imperative to beat the hell out of Texas.
I figured that one out without ever setting foot in OK.
