Help! I've been invaded!

We had this years ago. Came home from a holiday to find that a packet of dry baby food (we used to reconstitute it with water), had weevils and contaminated the whole cupboard. We called the council and they sent out someone to fumigate. What bothers me is that the eggs must be in there to begin with!

OMG I learn something every day. I have never heard of these little blighters. I had better inspect my cupboards.

Well, I did inspect my cupboards, found weevils in three different bags of flour and in two different sugars, and some just walking about happily along the shelves! eeek. put them all out in the rubbish, washed all the cake tins etc, and then washed the shelves in a weak bleach solution.Took a while, but thanks Gransnet, for making me go and check.I hadn't used them for a while, so now will be buying good quality plastic storage and small amounts of flour and sugar for baking.

Oh I'm going to have to look now. Ugh.

I've just realised mine weren't weevils, but I have seen those.
We get lots of mice from the surrounding fields and last week had to kill a large rodent, not a rat, don't know yet what it was. Horrible!
Jackiekeil - we were in Singapore in the late 60s - '66 to '68. I remember the ants and cockroaches.

These things are a fact of life in our house. DH took our larder cupboard apart once and found they were all living in the chipboard shelves - the side edges of the shelves aren't sealed like the front and back, so he took all the shelves in the garage, emptied a whole can of fly spray into all edges, then the next day, after cleaning them, he painted the edges with gloss paint to seal them. I always keep all my packs of dried goods in either kliplock bags or strong polythene bags with freezer bag clips, which keeps everything bug free. But I find them in my books too. And I'm not going to put them in polythene bags
I did keep flour in tupperware at one time, but I still found weevils in there. The fact is, the eggs are in the flour when it's bought and the only way to stop the bugs is to keep flour in the freezer for a few days. This only kills the eggs and stops them hatching, though - the eggs are still in the flour

Another one here who was in Singapore '66 to '68. I didn't mind any creepy crawlies except the enormous 'Bombay runners'! Never had weevils in the flour though, as far as I can recall!

Growing up in a grocer's family during the '50's I've always thought that weevils were just a fact of life. They sometimes get caught in the base flaps of cardboard boxes in the cupboard but don't get into the goods inside. I always check before using any dried goods. Bit like you'd check if milk's off, fruit and veg are maggot free or eggs are ok before you use them.

I didn't think they existed anymore, I thought someone had found a way to get rid of them! I must have been very lucky.

After cleaning out that particular cupboard, which I keep for all baking, plus cake tins Etc. I decided to clean out the pantry, wipe down all the shelves and get rid of any way out of date things.Oh heck! Lots. I must stop stockpiling things. Then I moved onto the fridge, and cleaned that out too, and removed a couple of iffy items. Feel quite pleased it's all done now.

I didn't mind any creepy crawlies except the enormous 'Bombay runners'
Ugh, yes!! They abound in the tropics don't they.

I don't remember Bombay runners - were they spiders?

Centipede type things?

Cockroaches!
They are very fast

They were known as 'the great leveller' because everyone had to put up with them, from the British High Commissioner to the lowest of us mortals!

Greyduster I lived in Hong Kong and Singapore as a child. I remember the cockroaches, they were HUGE. I also remember that our cooker and fridge had legs and they were stood in bowls of water that were topped up each morning to stop insects and vermin getting into them.

Oh, cockroaches, yes they could move fast. The only time I saw them was once on opening the cupbord under the kitchen sink - these creatures dashed out towards me . I thought - hoped - they were looking for shadow, rather than running to attack.

I remember one scuttling through the screen door when it was opened at DD's house; she let the dog in but it was too fast for the dog.
They are just revolting.

Yuk, I hate, really hate cockroaches. Luckily I've only come across them in a couple of self catering places on holiday - then they were some one else's problem not mine!

We do have silver fish in our pantry, (and the downstairs loo) but I quite like them, I've been told they eat mites and spiders and such like so I figure they're OK to have around. I was trained from an early age to always keep 'loose' foodstuffs in sealed containers. Or the fridge.

I had a weevil in a bag of flour once. There might have been more than one, but I didn't stop to check! Since then I examine any packet stuff like flour dreading seeing a other.

I can't stand silverfish. They give me the willies and unfortunately we get them quite often in the bathroom and even in our bedroom. Apparently they eat almost anything and are quite hard to get rid of once you have them. When we have them, I have tissues strategically placed ready to squash the horrible creatures. Ugh!

I once found little black mites in flour but used it believing that the hot oven temperature in the baking would kill them anyway. No-one suffered any ill effects. Does that make me a bad person? In my defence I did throw the rest of the flour away and bought a new pack.

I used to work in a hospital kitchen and cockroaches were rife in the lowest cupboards. No one seemed unduly bothered and they were never mentioned!! I listened to a fascinating programme on Radio 4 last week, called Natural Histories (I think) which was about cockroaches. It made me more sympathetic towards them. They are not as indestructible as people think.

A work colleague of mine found weevils in a bag of flour and threw out everything - even tinned food! Rather excessive I thought.

Funnily enough I just started to make bread again after a long gap ( my husband has been ill and has only just come home). I found several bags of extra strong bread flour which were way out of date. Usually I use out of date goods quite happily but this time I threw them away just in case the nasty little weevils appeared! I really didn't want my husband to be ill again!

Ive had them too, one really hot summer and my flour was not out of date, I now keep everything in plastic sealed containers.

btw, the ones in books and in bathrooms are silverfish, I get them in my undersink cupboard, little blighters, I hate them and will happily throw out anything that has them inside, even a favourite book. I am wary of books from the charity shops in case there are any in them. My last pseudonym was 'silverfish'.

This brought back horrific memories.......

A few years ago, I opened a packet of semolina and saw it 'move'. As did the all the flours and sugars, and all manner of dry goods..........

I even unscrewed the lid of a jar of sugar (with a guest standing my my side. I did the best Oscar performance of normality that one can imagine) to find a larvae happily crawling around the lid. It stopped in amazement at being found and looked expectantly up at me. It had, however, to go........

It turned out that we had been infested with 'product stored moths', probably brought in to the house in the semolina as it was the most heavily infested (it was heaving!) but they had quickly spread everywhere, as other Gransnetters have said.

A day or so later, I went into my utility room (having asked friends of mine if they were having a particularly bad year for moths, as I had noticed a few around) and there was, at the far end, a 'cloud' of moths.

As I stood, trying to comprehend what I was seeing, this 'cloud' moved silently towards me. They were coming to get me! Have you ever thought of malevolent moths? Well, I have seen them!

Fly spray? Poof. They brushed it off and kept on a-coming. In desperation I flew upstairs and grabbed my hairspray and used a whole can. That did the trick and they were no more.

I will never forget all the food we had to throw away and the hours of scrubbing and extra (unwanted!) cleaning, too.

Horrible, horrible, horrible. (The moths and the extra cleaning!)