De-bugging - October 31, 2026

For the past couple of weeks, I have been chasing moths in my house - little white moths.  They are some fast, agile little suckers.  Clapping a flying one between your hands is nearly impossible.  I finally resorted to misting them with water or alcohol to slow them down enough to kill them.

Yesterday afternoon, I grabbed a bag of potato chips from a basket on the microwave, laid it on the porch worktable, and later discovered an ivory-colored worm with a dark head crawling on the bag.  By the time I made this discovery, I was on the back porch and considered that the worm might have gotten on the bag after I brought it to the porch.  Later in the evening, after I'd chased and killed three moths in the living room, I did some googling on how to get rid of moths in the house (yes, I'd already hung moth traps in every room in the house).  The article mentioned moth cocoons and eggs.  I had a look at cocoon images, one of which showed an ivory-colored worm with a dark head emerging from the cocoon.  

Oh, geez....  That worm on the potato chip bag had apparently come from INSIDE the house.

This morning, I decided to empty the baskets on the microwave.  They contained stuff like brown sugar, rice, cocoa, chocolate chips, potato chips - ALL OF WHICH WAS SEALED IN PLASTIC ZIP BAGS.  When I began lifting things out of the bags, a small swarm of moths took flight.  

I hurried to the porch with the baskets and threw away everything they contained.  My holiday baking supplies just took a huge hit.

And it's not just moths....

Last week, I noticed some tiny white specs on the kitchen floor, directly under the cabinet by the sink.  I'd noticed them before and had washed them up (they wouldn't sweep up) and had run the broom under the bottom edge of the cabinet, but they'd come back.  It occurred to me that the white specs might be spider shit.  I went ferocious with the broom, scrubbing it under the counter to kill any spider that might be lurking there, washed up the specs, and the next day they were back.

I got out a hand-held mirror and a flashlight and looked under the cabinet.  There was a 2" wide recess under the lip of the cabinet.  It was full of spider egg sacs.  

I nearly lost my mind. 

I got out the vacuum cleaner, but the hose would not fit into the crevice.  I got out the Swiffer, but it wouldn't do the job, either.  I got out a brush, and it took out some of the egg sacs.  A spider was among them.  I offed it and went back to work with the brush, but I could not remove all of the egg sacs.  

The Husband has been in the hospital and in rehab for the past week, and I have been staying with him and have been unable to get down to business with this spider eradication program.  I hate to spray pesticides, and I don't even know what will dissolve a spider egg sac or how I'm going to get it into that crevice, but when this rehab stay is over and I have the time and the presence of mind to do something about this, there'll be a thorough spider-killing around here.