Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Nest of Moth-Ra

Tonight when I got home, I saw another moth. I promptly lost my ever-loving mind and went berserk searching every nook and cranny of this room…and then I found it.

Under the bed. WAY under the bed. So far under the bed that I had to get a broom to get to it – forgotten, forlorn, lost, and alone, a battered-up leaky bag from which there wafted the unmistakable chalky scent of alpaca.

Except it wasn’t alpaca. It was llama, a bag of llama yarn I’d gotten at a fiber festival, Lord, years ago. I’d messed around with it a bit, found it a bit unnerving thanks to the guard hairs (longer, whisker-like hairs that are a large factor in what make a wool scratchy) and strange soft-but-yet-coarse texture, put it into this bag and shoved it under the bed.

For all I know, those moths have been chewing on it since Day One. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had, because when I opened up the bag and pulled out what remained, it was like pulling out a random ball of short little strings, barely held together by some cotton ties. Whoa.

And just to put a little icing on it, a few moths even fluttered out, thumbing their noses at me and going, “Ha, ha, we ate yer llama!” (So I squished them. SO THERE, Sons of Moth-Ra!) (Although sweet Moses on buttered toast, have you ever tried to swat yourself a clothes moth?! They fly like little drunken Celts, swerving randomly around and somehow never being where by the laws of physics they really ought to have been. Also, they have super powers. Because nothing else can explain how I, at 128 pounds, can slam my hand down on something no bigger than the head of a really big pin and have it spring right back up again, fla-whittering around like it’s going, “Whoa! Duuuuuude! Yer harshin’ mah mellow, dude…!”

Fortunately, Everything Else that is beloved of moths and their progeny has been safely bagged up all along – I haven’t found a single frayed ply on anything else in the stash.

And, now that I’ve found the Nest of Moth-Ra…I will be able to sleep tonight.

On…the bed…

…above the former moth-nest…

oh dear, I seem to have given myself a raging case of the heebie-jeebies…

5 comments:

Louiz said...

I had something similar. The best way to remove heebie geebies? Hoover (vacuum) everything in sight, including the mattress. Works like a dream (also, no more flying menaces)

Plus, verification word is festive!

Jenn C. said...

Yay for finding the moth nest!

I keep seeing little flutterers, but they're mostly downstairs, away from the stash. I've been telling myself they're clearly food moths and not clothes moths, and hoping that I'm right.

Because the carpet beetles are bad enough. I really don't want to have worry about moths too.

Anonymous said...

I have moth detector traps in the back room where the stash is and in the kitchen where there are inevitably a few random meal moths from time to time. It's reassuring to have "catch" in the kitchen and not in the stash room ....

Mizzle said...

My husband has a trick that works well on mosquitoes: instead of trying to swat them (with a fly swatter or your hand), through a t-shirt (or tea towel, or something like that) at them.

The idea is that the fly swatter is likely to just create a whoosh of air that will actually just push them away, while the t-shirt falls over them like a net.

I know, it might not sound convincing, but it works pretty well really.

Kate said...

I just arrived at your blog via KissMyFrog - I love it! I feel enormous sympathy for the stress caused by the Nest of Moth-Ra, and I truly believe that you have earned some serious knitting time this weekend as a recovery/ reward! :>
ps very extremely glad that my work day does not involve a 4:40am train.