Ruud Kleinpaste: Avoiding clothes moths

Saturday Morning with Jack Tame

After 34 years of talkback radio, the biggest fear of householders is finding heaps of moths. Any moths! And everyone believes that moths are bad, simply because they have to be clothes moths! Okay. If you find a beautiful, very small moth which has golden wings (held like a roof structure over the body) and with a bright orange hair-do, you might be looking at the webbing clothes moth, Tineola bisselliella. It is no longer than 7 mm. This “webbing” cloths moth is really a recycler of woollen materials: yes, clothes, but especially carpets! It seems to like open spaces with keratin – lots of keratin. Our house is the archetypal “mechanics car”. In my case that means it’s usually full of pests and insects that gnaw away at soft furnishing, clothing garments, carpets and timber. Carpet is removed right to the backing and the woollen yarn ends up in bits and pieces, often sticking up from the remainder of the carpet. They usually end up in the my vacuum cleaner. There is a second species of clothes moth: the Case-making Clothes moth, Tinea pellionella. The caterpillars make tiny cases from silk and their own excrement: a cosy house to live in! I reared some on some old carpet, after I found an infestation in some of my woollen socks. The case-making clothes moths are not as glittery-gold as their relatives, but basically brown with golden scales and some dark spots on the wings. Same size, though! Life-cycle of these moths is similar in length and variable. In warm conditions they go through a life cycle (egg-larva-pupa-moth-egg) in 6 weeks or so. When it’s cold in winter this may take 4 to 7 months. They belong to the Family of Tineidae. Their ecosystem service is to recycle keratin: hair, fur, wool, nails and skin. This is part of the decomposition job that many invertebrates do when an animal dies. Keratin is really hard to digest. Mammals and Birds can’t do that (cat’s fur-balls; owls ejected pellets, etc). These moths are therefore valued members of the RECYCLING SQUAD.I usually leave them to carry out their job (we’re going to change the carpet anyway….). But control can be achieved with some residual insecticides – active ingredients such as permethrin and other synthetic pyrethroids will do the job well (Safeworx aerosol cans). It works well and is residual for 6 to 8 weeks, as long as the substrate treated is not exposed to direct sunlight.

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