The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #172985   Message #4203378
Posted By: Stilly River Sage
03-Jun-24 - 12:54 PM
Thread Name: DECLUTTER *hoards *bad habits *toxic stuff - 2024
Subject: RE: DECLUTTER *hoards *bad habits *toxic stuff - 2024
Dashing out in a minute, this just popped up in Facebook and I've only grabbed the URL, haven't read much yet. Alas, it is timely.
Sweater-Eating Moths Are an Unbeatable Enemy
They will eat much more than just your clothes.
Every year, beginning around the end of March, my household starts planning a massacre. Our targets are our home’s clothes moths: My spouse and I lay pheromone-laced traps in the closets, living room, and bedrooms; we—and our two cats—go on alert for any stray speckle of brown on a cream-colored wall. The moment we spy an insect, we’ll do whatever we can to crush it. After killing dozens upon dozens, my husband and I can now snatch moths straight out of the air.

None of this has been enough to eliminate the moths. These particular moths—webbing clothes moths—are simply too well adapted to modern human life; as a species, “they don’t really live outside anymore,” Isabel Novick, a biologist at Boston University, told me. Clothes moths have evolved into a perfect nuisance, so capable of subsisting on the contents of our homes that permanently purging them may be impossible.

Like cockroaches, they have evolved with people. There is no getting rid of them.