Sep 15, 2008

The Best Way to Kill a Maggot

Interesting situation. In the two days of deluge (it's been raining a tad.)
After two days, I finally went out to the trash can yesterday.

I lifted the lid, and probably, oh, 10,000 maggots on the lid. That's about as far as I got before being mildly nauseated. I got some bleach, and hoped that a little pouring of Clorox would solve the problem.

Today, went back. Assumed it would be 10,000 corpses of potential flies.

Bummer. Not so much.
The can smelled pretty clean though.

So up to the work station to Google "The Best Way to Kill a Maggot"
Lots of suggestions to chemical bomb the sh*t out of the area.
No thanks. It's not that I'd like to green up my garbage can - I just don't want to spend the 4 bucks to kill a bunch of garbage can maggots. I'd probably spend another 4 on the gas to the damn hardware store. Plus lose another half day in the black hole that is the hardware store. I also figure it could be a couple days until the garbage man would simply dump those suckers into the back of the truck... so I can't just wait it out. I'm already dealing with a mouse situation... (see earlier post) I'd rather not fight a two front war.

Now the best advice would be to eliminate the food.
Sure. If it's in your house or a drain. But this is a garbage can. I already compost. I recycle just about everything. I'm wondering if a neighbor stuck a soiled diaper or an ex wife in there. Who knows? I'm not going to root around to find out the 'why' other than it's a bleeding garbage can with garbage in it. One would assume there's some biological situation that they'd rather not investigate in the bottom of their trash receptacle. However, it's a little unnerving that they're all under the lid. Can't have the wife seeing that.

But if I'm not going to spend money on a can of poison to kill these pre-flies, and the bleach didn't seem to dent the problem... I was hoping the birds would dine on that shmorgasborg of maggots... but maybe even the birds view that dining experience the same way I look at a 24 hour Chinese Buffet off the strip?

There's no exoskeleton ... ahah! Boiling water!

So I boiled up some water in the tea kettle... more than once... and poured that on those little proto-flies. At the very least, now they're at the bottom of the can, in the rain/bleach water. Any of them in the tied off bags - hey, live and let live. I can't see you, and hopefully you'll keep eating whatever drew you to that spot in the first place. Just don't come into my yard, or I'll have to smack you.

Update to the War on Mice - haven't bothered with the mouse situation since I'm waiting to see if they all drowned or migrated into the house. No signs inside - meaning the glue traps haven't captured anything - and there are no signs of scat anywhere down there. How do I know that? I was scouting for water seepage all weekend.

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