Saturday, September 6, 2014

Attack of the Kill 'er Rice Moths


We eat lots of rice. Wild, brown, white, Jasmine, Basmati, organic and whatever else looks good. My favorite is short grain brown rice, because it stays moist for leftovers. Rice is cheap, easy, quick, healthy for us and one of the few grains that doesn't turn me into a puffy mess of inflammation.

We keep our rice handy, right there on our little table in the kitchen that has become the fruit and vegetable stand. We use a rice cooker so the process is scoop, rinse, plop, add water and flip the on switch. A few weeks ago Ernst bought a nice big bag of wild rice from Raley's - about five pounds. It joined the other rice varieties in the kitchen corner, sealed up in the original bag. And that is how they got their little moth foot-hold into our house.

The other day I went to make rice as usual, but moths flew out of the brown rice. Then they flew out of the white rice, because moths are not prejudice. Ick, moths all over the kitchen. Dump, dump, dump - it's a good thing rice is cheap. I washed out the containers as I swatted moths. Then I saw the bag of wild rice. I picked it up to inspect it, and the rice spilled out of the dozens of holes the monster moths had chewed to escape and make our lives miserable. The only good thing I can say about these rice loving moths is they are easy to kill. They just sit there as we come into swat them and send them to an early death, but not before leaving behind a brown blob of moth death, usually on a painted white surface.

They are in the kitchen, they are in the bedroom, they are in my dreams. It's not even close to Plague Eleven, but I'm getting annoyed. When moths invade your utensil drawer, for no apparent reason, and leave the pasta alone, you may begin to wonder what their little pin head brains are up to next. What do they want with our knives while they ignore the brown rice noodles? Fortunately we had just done a Go With the Food You Have Month, so if we need to start tossing pantry items, we already ate most of them. Our next step is to purchase these little moth killing tents. It's like a camping trip for your insects, without the marshmallows.

You should see their little backpacks