In praise of clothes moths

 

Well I maybe should have used Mark Antony's quote and substituted "I come to bury moths and not to praise them" but I have a rather grudging respect for these little creatures, even though I have been exterminating them in very large numbers for the last few months. 

The photo above is of what was previously a rather nice (Turkish?) rug, which I have just consigned to the bin. The light-coloured areas have been completely consumed by the caterpillars of Tineola bisselliella, the common clothes moth. I will put a link here to Wikipedia where you can read all about their habits and interesting preferences (eg they prefer dirty clothes to clean; they shun the light; adult moths have a non-functioning mouth and do not feed - they breed then die). Here is the Wikipedia link:

Clothes moths

The carpet which they consumed had all the properties that they liked. It was pure wool; it was, by virtue of being on the floor, a bit dirty; it was covered by a wooden chest that had enough room for them to crawl underneath, lay eggs in the darkness and breed. So Ground Zero or Mothership for moths, and they certainly needed no extra invitation. 

Whenever Cro saw one fluttering past in the summer she would always jump up and shout "moth!" and run after it and in most cases manage to splat it. She had seen the damage that they had done in her parents' rambling house. She recalled her mother (Mor) showing her the clothes belonging to her late father, which she had saved in a nice dark wardrobe. As Mor pulled out the old overcoat it practically disintegrated.  So Cro did not see their interest or magic, but I can quite appreciate all these pests that find a way to insert themselves into our human lives. And do remember that without moths we would not have the nice adjective 'motheaten'.

You may recall that I have had a long-running battle with rats on my bird-table, trying to make sure that I only feed those parts of wildlife that I choose to. But part way through I thought "Is this just because the robins have got better PR?" They are colourful and pert and cheeky and feature on Christmas cards. I have yet to see 'Yule Wishes' with a cable-tailed rat staring out at me. But they are all - like all of us - just trying to do their best for themselves and their families. Politicians are always bashing on about hard-working families, and why should rat families be excluded from that just because of some ill-directed Black Death propaganda?

So I grudgingly admit that maybe my dislike of moths (which I admit is still current) may stem from unreasonable prejudice against a hard-working creature just looking for its niche. And the fact that we have acquired edible and desirable possessions over the years perhaps makes it partly our fault. Had we stuck to synthetics, the moths would not have been interested. You could even see their depredations as some kind of badge of quality. 

But despite my moral scruples, I have felt that one of my duties as a custodian of nice things is to make sure that they stay nice. So I have been all over Amazon and the Internet and have tooled up. I have stuck 'moth pheromone traps' in the most moth-beleagured areas of the house, and boy do those things work. It's a simple concept. The moths just want to get it on with the opposite sex of moth before they die (and we can all identify with that can't we?) and the disco ball for moths is pheromones. They are attracted beyond measure, so if you impregnate a postcard sized card with pheromones and then cover it in a sticky glue, it is like catnip for them, and soon looks like the Somme, if moths had fought at the Somme. I have seen fifty or sixty moths stuck to one trap, dead or dying. And then another moth will flutter by and, ignoring all evidence of the risk, decide 'this smells nice'. This is where human observational intelligence certainly scores over instinct. 

So I have probably killed a thousand of the hardworking creatures, and will continue trapping and spraying while I still see any (Cro would have been proud). And I even have acquired (via Freecycle) the thing which is required to consolidate my winnings - a chest freezer. 

I put up an ad along the lines of 'Chest Freezer wanted; will not be used for dead bodies' although even in that I may slightly have lied. For you see, the only way to make sure that you kill both the moths, the larvae, the caterpillars and the eggs is to put them in a deep freeze for 14 days. I found this out from English Heritage, no less and if anyone knows how to protect medieval tapestries it is they. 

So three recovered wool rugs are now in the freezer and when I return from holiday the 'Lutte' will continue.