::alio!::

The lesser of two weevils?

Here's something interesting: I have weevils in my house. Wheat weevils, to be precise. Innocuous looking little blighters, slow moving, helpless when flipped over, and about the size of a flax seed. In fact, when I find most of them, they are on their backs, like they did it to themselves. They remind me of teeny tiny rhinoceri with balance issues.

The thing is, I have no idea how they got here nor why they appear to be almost everywhere in my house. According to the internet, they feed on grains, but, while I have found several in my pantry cupboard, I haven't found any in my food - and all my baking stuff, flour, oats, etc., is sealed.

I noticed them a few weeks ago, I think, and dismissed them as some sort of mite or random beetle in escaping from the snow. But now they're proliferating in my house and I don't know what they're eating or where they're coming from. And they're in every room, not just the kitchen. For someone who moves that slowly, it must take an awfully long time to travel to all corners of the 1500 square foot apartment. Just now, one of them is slowly plodding up my living room wall. I will squish him in a minute - he won't get far.

So that is my conundrum: a weevil infestation. With no root cause, and no damage, either. Very interesting . . .

***ADDENDUM***

Out of curiosity, I have just cleared out the cleaning supplies from the bottom of my pantry, as that is where the major concentration of weevils is coming from. There are piles of what looks like some sort of grain that I do not own on the floor, and several wiring holes drilled into the walls. These are extremely large holes, unnecessarily so (which also confirms my reservations about having my landlord fix things in my apartment - I'm a much better handyman).

I plan to vacuum up what weevils I can, then seal the holes I can see with tape. My guess is the little boogers are coming up through the walls from my landlord's pantry, which is directly below mine.

Ah.

Stay tuned.

Posted by Ally at December 11, 2007 01:02 PM