Friday, November 21, 2008

Carpet beetles, then.

Thanks for the help, everyone. We haven't seen anything in particular in the house that looks like a carpet beetle, but we haven't looked too hard - what with the swamp and all, we've got hot and cold running bugs and we usually don't notice unless there are a million of them (the super-small aphid thingies from the last post - I'm guessing they're not involved, just annoying), or big enough to ride (cockroaches and banana spiders).

I'll be moving all the suspicious wools out to the garage for a couple weeks. With Thanksgiving coming up, there's no room in the freezer, but it's pretty cold out there. Most likely they've stayed out of the yarn closet because of the lavender and everything on the floor - or near the floor - is sealed up in plastic. The idea was to keep out general creepy-crawlies, but maybe by dumb luck, it worked. I'll check it out today.

I do know that when we clean the carpet, the waste water has bug guts in it. I doubt that's a good sign.

This place is a rental, so as long as I can save the wool (SAVE THE WOOL! we need to make posters), I'll let the house rot into the ground. Not my job to save it. Well, I'll mention it to the landlord. But I won't let him spray while we live here (my asthma, and I don't want the Goob exposed), but maybe as we move out, I'll say 'oh, by the way...'


Thanks, everyone!

6 comments:

Amy Lane said...

Oh for the sweet love of wool--CRAWLIES!!! We DO have moths--I keep all my yarn in cedar plastic crates and so far, so good (but I'm not counting my yarn larvae before they die, if you know what I mean...)

But Im feeling for you and the little bastards...bug guts=gross, and I should know...they're all over my ceiling!

Alwen said...

With the caveat that I don't know Southern bugs at all, I just had another thought:

Google "confused flour beetles" or red flour beetles.

Flour beetles have more of a segment-y body than the dermestids, which are a smooth little ladybug or scarab sort of a shape, more aphid-ish.

Although they don't eat fiber (as far as I know), they are also teh suck - I battled them in cereal, bird seed, flour and they'll take any grain product they can get. (They'll even eat chocolate: die beetle die!)

Leonie said...

No one has asked, possibly in case it instigates a melt down, but....how is the shawl going?? (ducks and runs!)

Anonymous said...

Whatever they are, let's just call them fuckers.

Glad to help!

Liz said...

Oh, yuk. So sorry to hear that and hope it's easily sorted out without too much more damage to the house and the stash... Putting things out in the cold probably helps.

We don't get many bugs here, but I had a blackfly infestation one year - hundreds of thousands of the little bastards all over the kitchen; breathing them in was the worst part...

Anonymous said...

How on earth do you identify bug guts in your carpet cleaning water? Mine is usually just brown soup - we live on a dirt road, and have no ac, so we keep the windows open until it basically drops into the 40's at night, so I get lots of road dust and gravel driveway tracked through my house!