October 05, 2004

• Well, were they Nostril's socks?
• I think they're termites, squid. They were nestled deep into your carpet but the warmth (steam, really) of the clothing brought them wiggling to the surface. *scratching furiously* You may need a professional to get rid of them there critters.
• Did they come from the ceiling perhaps? Happened to me in preadolescence, a floor full of specks that twisted beneath my bare feet. A raccoon entombed in the attic and fecundity falling from above. Shuddering still.
• Um, back on track (sorry) I'd be the first one to blame the carpet if it hadn't been recently cleaned, since I've lately found moth larva infestations in a couple of my rugs. If not that, it could be termites, as they're attracted to moisture and could have come up through the floor. But to get through a carpet that quickly? I blame the laundry room.
• That is odd, had a friend recently who had the little maggots infest her kitchen countertop with no signs of where the little buggers came from. She cleaned them up and sprayed her counter tops and insides of her cabinets and the kept coming back. She finally had a exterminator in to fix the problem. The exterminator found a water leak inside her wall, and his guess was this is what was causing the problem. Still didn't make a lot of sense to me. Yet she had the water leak fixed and the wood replaced and no more maggots.
• Could they be carpet beetle larvae? They can live under the edges of carpeting and can be attracted to laundry.
• I left a black t shirt there to see if anymore would pop up and sure enough, I was able to nab about 25 or so and put them into a jar. Called the landlord who is (supposedly) sending a pest control type person to come and check what it is. There is something about small white worms that creeps me out bigtime.
• cabingirl, nah, I don't think so. No hairs or bristles.
• And I can't imagine moth larva being the culprits as the carpet is made from artificial fibers.
• Caught in the act -- the mysterious creatures that come to steal every other sock.
• Have you quit using heroin recently?
• No yeti, still shooting up daily. Seriously though, it felt like those sequences in Requiem for a Dream. Ick...
• [derail] breakfast_yeti has one of the greatest user numbers possible. [/derail]
• squidranch I know pretty much how you feel. once i was gone for a few days,got back late, went to bed and there was a maggoty mouse corpse on my pillow. I didn't discover this until I put my head down, though. If the bug guy doesn't show, you may want to take it to your local cooperative extension becaue they know a lot about bugs. Unless you don't live in America. Then, I don't know what to tell you except, I feel you nausea.
• Are they actually eating holes in your carpet, or just climbing up from deep down within the mess? Depending how long you've lived there, it could be an old brood of some sort of insect. The eggs have probably been laid deep down in the carpet, and the heat of your laundry is hatching them. Have you had an infestation of insects before? Try getting a thing of salt and shaking it over a small portion of the floor, and then working it in with a broom. I know it works for fleas (dehydrates the eggs so they can't hatch), and maybe it will work for these things.
• The carpet is just about a year and a half old. Not old at all. And the wood beneath seemed to be in pretty good shape when they re-carpeted. They also used new carpet padding beneath the new carpet. I'm frankly puzzled as well as being grossed out.
• so. it begins. *shuffles away, cackling*
• There are grubs, bugs, worms and insects *everywhere*. Doesn't matter how new or clean a carpet looks, its the perfect breeding ground for gazillions of tiny lifeforms, probably already loaded with stuff right out of the factory. Likelihood is they are larvae of small flies or other insects. Moths are not out of the question, because they are not able to distinguish between synthetic & organic materials. Anything fitting would be a place for them to lay eggs. There would also be copious material for creatures to eat in there, sloughed skin cells, particulate matter, food crumbs, other cooties. 75% of the dust in a house is sloughed skin cells, and myriad tiny organisms feed upon it in a hierarchy of microcosmic ecology. Unlikely to be termites. You'll find them first in the skirting boards. Plus, termite larvae don't manifest in the way you describe; the adults will herd the cocooned juveniles around, you would have seen them also. I wonder if they were some form of silverfish larva. Probly just fly larva that hatched due to moist warmth of the clothes. Honestly, dued, you're walking around on a rich ecological farm all the time, with carpets. They're quite unhealthy things to have on the floor, really, if you have that whole Howard Hughes thing going. You don't even wanna *know* what's living in your pillows. Trust me.
• You mentioned that the carpet was fairly new and the wood underneath seemed in good shape. Was it plywood subflooring or old hardwood floors? If it's the latter--and if I had a choice (being a renter and all)--I'd just have the carpet ripped out permanently. Nostril's right about carpet critters. I helped my parents rip out our 20-year-old carpet-n-pad to install hardwood floors. We were so overcome by the dust we had to leave the house. /wall-to-wall, never again.
• I let a lot of spiders and small black ants live inside the house. They get rid of almost every other kind of bug. Still I need to use repellents for cockroaches once in a while.
• Oh, and I also have lots of geckos.
• /shudder
• I love my little geckos. So cheering.
• ew...call a professional. rip your carpet out. burn the wood. throw holy water on the spot and then dry it with a flamethrower. Acid washes also work.
• No really, Nostrildamus, tell us more.
• Monkeyfilter: They live under the edges of carpeting and can be attracted to laundry.
• Stuff alway gets trodden into carpets. As for old carpet: "Help! It's alive! It's ALIVE!!!" In short, nothing but a disguised layer of compost. Wooden floors are handsome things.
• I left some of the laundry in the same spot last night and when I checked it this morning there were several of the little buggers there again. I called my landlord who has called a exterminator and the general consensis is that they are termite larva. As an experiment I grabbed about 25 of them and put them in a jar along with a bit of raw hamburger and they don't seem terribly interested in it and are more concerned with finding a way out of the jar, which also points to termite larva. This makes me far less queasy than maggots in my carpet.
• Termite larva? Preposterous. Termite larva have legs.
• hmmm I am back to being grossed out again.
• Maggots of the blue-bottle and allied flies are smallish, off-white, and wormish looking. They turn into flies in a couple of days if kept in a jar. If you have a wound with any necrotic tissue, they do a fine clean-up jobl howeverr, they probably won't go for fresh raw hamburger -- what's reeking and rotting is their preferred food.
• That's pretty much what they look like. Unfortunately I am all out of necrotic tissue.
• Maybe if you put the meat through the wash, they would be more interested.
• Nostril's right, termite larva have legs. *has recently gotten rid of termite nest somewhere under the garden*
• I washed my meat. I've got clean meat.
• I wonder what kind of bugs would turn up if I didn't leave my laundry in the dryer until it was cold and wrinkled.
• larva Larvae. Dumb fuck.
• fuck off.
• My last comment was directed at myself. Really.
• Oh, my appo pollo logies. Sorry.
• No maggot throwing boys.
• An update: Still haven't heard from the exterminator, so I called the landlord who tells me he (the exterminator) will be contacting me next week. All the maggots that I had collected in the jar along with the (now putrid) hunk of burger have gone to maggot heaven. I was able to go over the area again and found a single brown pupa. About the size of the worms, but with a hard brown skin on it. I have it in another jar and will wait to see what eventually hatches from it.
• BTW-who wants to come and stay in my apartment. I have room on the rug.
• Just wondering... did more of 'em appear during the debate?
• Now that you mention it, they all rose up on their little worm behinds (or fronts, you can never tell with worms) and uttered in choruses from their worm orifices "four more years" whenever Bush appeared on the screen. I didn't think it was that unusual, so I didn't post it.
• See, I wondered. Because all the cockroaches in my apartment did the same damned thing. Except for the rising up part. Which they did on their backmost legs. While shaking their roachy little asses in some sort of victory dance.
• It were flies folks. The little fucker erupted last night sometime. The only think I can now logically reason (not quite so grossed out now) is that one of the neighborhood cats brought in something dead and some if it's wormy residents hopped off and burrowed into the rug. Then the cat took it's prize back outside when I rumbled in the in morning. Friggin cat. I'm gonna pee on that puddy if I catch it.
• Note: peeing on cat attempt at humor (reference to previous thread flame war). I really won't pee on it. Honest. I swear. Really, I won't. Stop looking at me that way...
• So what happens if you put your DIRTY laundry in a different spot on the carpet, Squiddy?
• When they say to spray your cat with water as a deterrent, I don't think that's what they meant. Although I bet it would be effective.
• Nothing happens anymore, either with the same spot of carpet or in different parts of the carpet. Tried dirty and clean laundry. I am just glad that I brought over a neighbor to see the weirdness so I could be certain that I wasn't losing my mind... at least very much...
• the cat would exact a terrible revenge. it's not worth it. They know you were thinking about it. They're going to make you pay just for that.
• I'm keeping my windows shut now pete, just to be sure.
• Cats, right? Sheesh. *shakes dog off leg, picks up chewed-up belongings*
• I have room on the rug. )) to scartol for showing the way to the link - which reminded me of this thread - which in turn gave me many laughs!