Like a moth to flour

Defeated after a decade of desultory countermeasures that have included washing pantry shelves with bleach and re-ordering sticky traps from the Vermont Country Store, I barely notice the pantry moths anymore. My son Will, living here this summer, is less tolerant. After two weeks of swatting them like flies, he took to the internet—and made a discovery both fascinating and foul.

I once had to gut part of a building due to the surprise discovery of damage by powder-post beetles, historic and ongoing; and when I bought my dilapidated, unwinterized house (near water), rats were chewing through to the kitchen. So flour moths are hardly a catastrophe. Still, our discovery produced a momentary shudder.

“Look for minute webbing,” Will read, and then was repulsed to discover, right at the end of his nose, webbing in many of the little holes drilled for shelf pins that support the adjustable shelves. My purges of pasta and cornmeal, my bleach attacks were for naught. The eggs are being laid deep in those holes. We must manually scrape out each one, hit each with a spray-blast of white vinegar, and restock the pantry. I always thought of pantry moths as old-fashioned, which explains my forbearance. (Aww, just like great-grandma must’ve had!) As it turns out, the convenient, modern shelf pins are what made my not-veryold cabinets susceptible.

I know that OHJ readers, facing any number of messy projects, versed in termites and carpenter ants, will take my icky details in stride. The moth tale is perfect for an issue that advises on moldy basements and how to keep mice from squeezing through very small holes. Cheer up, though, there’s plenty of pretty, including visits to three houses, each with the most modest of additions that enhanced livability.