Miraculously I found the blog that I started in October 2006!!! I have been looking for it for about a year. I have another blog that I started last year, but that one remains vanished, residing somewhere in cyberspace. Anyway, I was still living in Thailand at the time, and it brought back all sorts of fond memories!!! Here it is:
One of the things I love most about my kitchen is the ant-cupboard. Its a steel cupboard with "glass" panels, designed especially to keep the ants out. It seems to work for the ants - provided there are ant trays under each leg of the cupboard, and that nothing on top of the cupboard actually touches the wall.
The weevils, however, are a different story. At first I noticed one or two crawling out of Emily's weetabix in the mornings. It was a simple matter of just picking them out and continuing to feed Emily. By the time I got half way through the box, there were more weevils than wheat... and from there the problem just seemed to spin out of control - weevils in every cereal box, in the pasta, in anything that seemed edible. Even in bags of pasta that had not even been opened yet.
Three nights ago I cooked up some pasta - to my horror not only did a gazillion weevils promptly die in the boiling water, but these revolting whitish/yellow larvae like things also floated to the surface. Yuck!
I raced off to the internet to check out the extent of the problem - belatedly worrying if I was somehow poisoning my 12-month baby by allowing her to share cereal with the weevils.
First the good news - apparently they are not harmful. Some weevils can pass on E.Coli, but that would depend on their diet, and I happened to know that our weevils had a perfectly good diet.
So what is a weevil? They are tiny little blackish brown creatures that just seem to eat and eat and eat and lay eggs. They have these snout like protrusions in front of them. They look evil, and they are!
Females excavate a hole in the pasta (or rice, or weetabix), deposit a single egg, and then seal the hole with a sticky secretion. Over a period of weeks each female may lay up to 600 eggs, and continue to do so until just before death. Marvellous!
The soft, white, legless larvae feed, grow, and pupate entirely within the kernel. These were what were floating in my supper three nights ago.
To complete the life cycle: adults remain in the grain until completely hardened and then gnaw their way out, leaving a round emergence hole. The weevils we see walking around are apparently looking for new nesting grounds.
That ends my lesson on weevils. There was a lot more yucky stuff, but I'd rather not remember it all!
So what does one do about them? After reading several webpages, I had to conclude that there is either nothing I can do, or that the problem is easily solved - that's how varied the opinions are!!! Being an eternal optimist, but not going as far as buying a second fridge as one person suggested, I decided to declare outright war on the creatures. Oh, and unlike one lady in Singapore, I do not think that they are "cute" and should be "protected" and even fed!!!
I threw out anything that was infested or even vaguely posed a potential refuge for them, I cleaned that jolly ant cupboard like I have never cleaned before, I disinfected, I sprayed insecticide, I placed all my flours and cereals and pastas, etc, in the freezer overnight.... and all the while I was thinking that once I was an HR Manager with a corner office and a fulfilling job, and now I clean out weevils. Once I lived in a nice pristine townhouse in Bryanston without any insect problems, now I deal daily with weevils, ants, spiders, cockroaches... and snakes. Yes, I know they are not exactly insects, but they still fall into the same sort of category of things that offend me by being in my house.
I felt myself getting angrier and angrier with the stupid weevils, and no longer just threw out things that were invested, but took great delight in squashing the weevils(they make a satisfyingly crunching noise when you squash them) and spraying insecticide all over them. They are hardy little critters: some I flushed down drain - five minutes later they were crawling out into the sink! Others I threw in the garbage, but within seconds they were climbing up the wall. While I was dealing with these escapees, Jonty - bless him - was gallantly rescuing his weevil-infested cookies from the rubbish bin because they are his "favourites". With all his 2 and three-quarters years of wisdom he also instructed me to stop what I was doing immediately and rather come and play play-dough with him as it would be a lot more fun. Besides he was "missing me".
I took his advice - well, as soon as I had dealt with the last of the weevils, and guess what? It WAS more fun.
Its been three days now, and I am getting over my anger at those creepy weevils, they have not returned (yet) and I must say, Emily seems to be enjoying her weetabix a whole lot more.
P.S. When I left that house in August 2007, not a single weevil had dared make a re-appearance!
nd in Eurasia (and I thought it was South African!!!!).
Arnica oils and salves are used on the skin for sprains, bruises, and inflammation (redness, swelling, pain) caused by insect bites, arthritis, or sore muscles. I've never tried this, but apparently Arnica can also be applied to the skin to treat a sore throat.
