Some Unwelcome Guests

L Livermore — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:43:47 +0000

As we have cats, it’s not unusual to have an occasional mouse taken into the house, resulting in chewed books and carpet. When part of the living room carpet looked like it had been eaten, we first blamed the mice. After I took a closer look at some carpet damage I realised that it was being caused by moths rather than mice.

Carpet damage caused by moth larvae

The house is currently in disarray as we clean behind the furniture, relentlessly vacuuming and washing the carpet. The adults moths have (we hope!) all been killed but I forgot to take a photo to check the identity, although I am fairly certain that the moths are Tinea pellionella, the case-bearing clothes moth.

I did manage to get a photo of the actual cause of the damage:

The culprit: a caterpillar of Tinea pellionella; the case was around 1cm long.

The larvae are the life stage which eat fabric and they move around in a portable case which reminds me of caddisflies. We will need to keep looking for adults to prevent the laying of more eggs but hopefully we have killed or removed most of the larvae.

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Some Unwelcome Guests