Like a lot of people during the holiday season, I love to bake. Cookies, cakes and muffins, I can't ever get enough time to make everything I want to make during the holidays. I enjoy baking and really love to give away my baked goods to friends, family and neighbors. It's an inexpensive alternative to giving out gifts during the holidays, and people seem to really enjoy the foods I make. This past weekend I was starting to mix together a batch of my famous sugar cookies, when I dipped my cup measure into the flour bag and pulled out what appeared to be a little brown moth. Because I'm especially jumpy around bugs, I predictably tossed the measuring cup into the air and let out a pretty big screech. Admittedly this was a complete over-reaction to a tiny bug in a cup of flour, but seeing a bug in my flour bag has never happened before and it was completely unexpected. So after calming myself down, cleaning up the newly floured kitchen counter tops (and getting my husband to pick up the little bug and put it safely into an empty baby food jar), I headed straight to my laptop to do a Google search for "bugs in flour". This brought up a multitude of results, including flour weevils, flour beetles and eventually I came across the term "pantry pests".
The definition of pantry pests, as I found out through my research, is pests that have an appetite for foods that are stored in the pantry, as one might have guessed. This can include a multitude of different bugs, including:
Rice Weevils and Granary Weevils: Both these weevils are dark red to brown in color and vary in size from 1/8 of an inch to 3/16 of an inch long. They both have a long 'snout' that projects from their head and have covers over their wings that have distinctive ridges.Sawtoothed Grain Beetle and Merchant Grain Beetle: These two beetles are quite similar in their slenderness, both are flat and brow and only about 1/10 of an inch long. These beetles both have six saw-like tooth projections on each side of the thorax. You can tell the difference between these two beetles by the size of their eyes: the sawtoothed grain beetle has smaller eyes than the merchant grain beetle and a larger area right behind the eyes.
Indian Meal Moths: The most common pantry pest, is a small moth with reddish-brown forewings that have a copper color to their outer wings and have whitish gray bodies.
Confused Flour Beetles: these beetles have shiny bodies that are reddish-brown and about 1/7 of an inch long. They are oval and look almost flattened. The antennae on the head get larger towards the tip and end in a four segmented club shape.
Red Flour Beetles: these look a lot like the Confused flour beetle, but the antennae end in a three segmented club shape.
I recognized the bug trapped in my empty baby food jar to be a Confused Flour Beetle. Now I needed to figure out why I had this little guy taking up residence in my cupboard. Apparently these pests are quite common, so I was amazed that I'd never come across one before. Almost everything I read said that these pests are brought into the home on food products you've purchased at the store, so this little guy had probably been in my flour since the flour departed the warehouse in which it was stored.
I also did some research to find out what kind of problems these pests can cause. I think I would have preferred to stay in the dark about some of these things, but I learned that pantry pests contaminate food with their bodies and their byproducts. Some of these pests produce byproducts that are less than appetizing (silk strings called frass), and the body parts of some types of beetles can actually irritate your mouth, throat and stomach if ingested. Not that you would ever choose to purposely ingest these, but if you eat something that has been contaminated with these bugs, you might not realize it until the irritation sets in. According to what I found on the net, these pests can also introduce microbes into food that may produce mycotoxins, which are highly carcinogenic compounds. I was starting to wish I'd never decided to make sugar cookies.
After a little more research, I set to cleaning out my cupboards. I pulled everything out and inspected each item carefully for more bugs. I put items that were stored in paper, foil or thin plastic into large plastic or glass cannisters, or in the freezer to keep them safe. After that, I started cleaning. Spills, crumbs and even some strange sticky spots were all removed from my pantry shelves to make sure I'd never see another pest inside my cupboard doors. I was surprised to learn that these insects will also breed in rodent baits, so I made sure to check the two mice traps we have in the basement, as well as the one in the bathroom. I dislike mice even more than insects, so the traps needed to stay, but I wanted to make sure they weren't breeding uninvited visitors.
After all of this, I have not seen another pantry pest in my home. But it's only been a week. I'm keeping an eye on the situation, and making sure that my cupboards stay clean and well organized. Whenever I purchase cereals, baking items like flour and cake mixes or oatmeal, I check the boxes and packaging carefully for signs of insect presence, including broken seals, torn packaging and the very obvious sign of the bugs themselves. This has really helped to organize my once messy cupboards and I feel more confident that the next time I go to make holiday cookies, I won't be finding a bug in any of my ingredients.
I told one of my close friends about my recent pantry pest experience and she was surprised I'd never seen one of these bugs before. She told me she'd found several in her pantry last year and that she called professionals in to deal with the problem. She said the pest control company in Minneapolis that she contacted were excellent; they knew their stuff about pantry pests and what to do to get rid of them. They also helped her figure out what she needed to do in her pantry to make sure she never sees these pests again, or at least to minimize the problem if they should ever return. If I see another one of these bugs, I'll be sure to call these folks immediately! And until then, I'm going to still be making my famous sugar cookies and I'll be extra special careful about the ingredients I use!
If you have a pantry pest problem in your home, or in your business, the professionals at Plunkett's Pest Control in Fridley Minnesota are there to help. They have the knowledge and tools needed to identify and control any pest problems in your home or business. For more information on Plunkett's Pest Control or to schedule an appointment, visit them at http://www.plunketts.net/ today!
No comments:
Post a Comment