I hate maggots!
Last night, when I was taking the trash out, I noticed that the trash can in the garage was making a lot of noise. As I went to pull the drawstrings on the trash bag, I saw little worms crawling around the outer edge of the bag. Upon further inspection, I noticed that there were hundreds more crawling around inside the bag. Then I realized what they were: MAGGOTS!
So, I went about trying to kill them. I had a can of Lysol Disinfectant Spray with me, so I tried that first. I sprayed it all over the top of the trash bag, and sprayed a good bit into the trash bag, as well. At that point, I noticed that there were some crawling around on the floor, too. So, I sprayed them as well. But, that didn’t phase them one bit. They kept right on crawling. I carefully grabbed the trash bag and ran it outside to the curb (good thing it was trash night!). Then, I scanned the garage for anything that might kill bugs.
The next poison I saw was a spray bottle of Lysol All-Purpose Cleaner. I assumed that it was stronger stuff than the aerosol spray can I had just used, so I decided to try it on the bugs. I could almost hear them laughing, as they kept on crawling, sometimes walking directly through big puddles of it, when they could have easily gone around. They just didn’t care. By this time, there were about 20 of them crawling around on the floor (that I could see). I had to use something specifically designed to kill bugs.
So, I ran inside and grabbed a can of RAID. The can we had handy did not say anything about maggots or flies on the label, but I hoped it might work better than nothing. So I sprayed it all over the floor, wherever I saw maggots. I made bigger puddles wherever there were several of them close together. They didn’t seem to mind, and just kept going about their business. By now, I’d seen them crawling under a nearby pile of wood, and more seemed to be crawling out, than were crawling in. Either way, this showed me that they were not only resilient little bastards, but that they were probably already well established in every nearby dark place/crevice. I was freaking out, now, because they seemed to be multiplying, right before my eyes. I could see probably 40 of them, at that point.
Next, I called Lacey, and asked her to look up how to kill maggots. She read about a lot of things that DON’T work, and then found some things that supposedly had worked for some people:
- Products containing permethrin
- Boiling water
- Bleach
I looked around the garage, some more, and found a can of pesticide, in a powder form. A quick glance at the ingredients confirmed that it did have the chemical I was hoping for: permethrin! So I started shaking the powder everywhere I could see the maggots, and also tried to make a barrier around the area that I had been treating thus far, to try and contain them. Somehow, it did not come as much of a surprise when they kept right on crawling, through pools and piles of 4 different poisons.
This was really testing my sanity. I kept worrying that they were on my shoes, or might have grabbed onto the bottom of my pants legs. The barrier didn’t work at all. They were branching out in every direction, at this point. Everywhere I looked, I saw maggots. I could probably see close to 100 of them, at this point, and I knew that there were lots more that I couldn’t see. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they were nearly invisible. Their coloring was a perfect match to my concrete garage floor. Without their constant wiggling, I might not have even noticed them. I felt helpless and defeated. But I still had one trick to try: bleach.
I grabbed a huge bottle of bleach, that just happened to be within arm’s reach, and started pouring it on them. I was a little worried about the fact that I was mixing so many harmful chemicals together, but I was much more concerned about killing these evil maggots. They kept right on crawling, though! UGH! Lacey had said something about bleach taking a half hour to kill them, though, so I tried to be patient. The maggots were continuing to expand, and to hide underneath every box, piece of wood, etc. I tried to move a few things out of the way, so I could pour bleach in more places, but I’m pretty sure that every time I moved something, it just helped them spread (because they were already crawling on everything).
Uh-oh, the bleach-pesticide-pesticide-cleaner-disinfectant mix was now working its way across the garage. Apparently the garage slightly slopes so that liquid runs towards the outside driveway. But we’ve got all kinds of bikes, scooters, helmets, jumpropes, baseball bats, etc. stored in the garage, some of it in cardboard boxes. I scrambled to move everything cardboard out of the way, but I was a bit too late. So I had to empty the contents of the wet cardboard boxes, before their contents got wet. Empty them where, though? Wherever I could. Stacked on top of toolboxes, bikes, shelves, plastic tubs, etc. Just had to hurry. I didn’t want this poison mixture getting all over my kids’ stuff.
Finally, I got things pretty well moved around, so the little poison rivers could proceed towards the exit. I figured this was also helping me to spread the poison around, so if the bleach did work after a while, it was already covering a wider area. It was getting very late, so I started picking up my cans of poison and putting them on a shelf. As I was doing that, I kept noticing more maggots in places that hadn’t been treated [enough] yet, so I poured more bleach on them.
I hated leaving the garage in this state, but I really needed to get to bed. I wished there was some way I could burn the tiny demon spawn, without destroying my car or house. Believe me, if I ever find a pile of these things outside, they’re going to burn. Revenge will be mine, someday. Unfortunately there was nothing more I could do, out there, so I closed the garage and prepared to go in for the night.
Before going inside, though, I shook my pants and checked my shoes for maggots. When I got inside, I watched the floor behind me as I walked, to make sure I didn’t see anything wiggling. I was very freaked out and paranoid, at that point, so I undressed slowly and carefully, putting my clothes and shoes into trash bags.
Then, I went up and took a hot shower. Every drop of water, running down my leg or through my hair, made me feel like maggots were crawling on me. I almost felt like taking a bath in bleach, but I wasn’t quite that far gone. If I had actually found maggots crawling on my skin, I might have gone to that extreme. That was one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve ever, and I’m sure my words cannot express just how horrible it felt.
This morning, I’m feeling a lot better (sanity-wise), but am not touching the garage door until the pest control people come. So, I’m staying home today so I can ensure that these evil creatures get annihilated ASAP.
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August 23rd, 2007 at 11:56 am
hehe, i knew by the title this would be entertaining
1) Maggots in the trash? Solution: Take trash out. Not your problem. Even if it’s not trash day, I wouldn’t bother to kill stuff that is in the TRASH.. It will just be carted away. News flash: maggots are everywhere and if something dies they will be on it within 2 hours. You can’t kill all the maggots in your yard.. ever. Maggots will be in the trash dumpster, in the trash trunk, in the city junkyard. They’re part of our ecology :) Hug that maggot!! :) Save the whales, too!! :)
2) 4 poisons to kill 40 maggots inside the house? It sounds like a job that could be done by about 20 stomps of a boot! Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose, since the poisons didn’t seem to work.
3) I really thought bleach killed pretty much EVERYTHING. Surprised to hear them still crawl through it! Did they die 30 minutes later?
4) I don’t like picturing you showering, but picturing you showering thinking every drop of water is a maggot is about as funny as that could be without introducing LSD into your water supply.. muahahahah!
5) Please don’t bathe in bleach. You don’t know what that could do to you.
6) You’re actually calling pest control over maggots?!? They’ll go away if you remove their food supply. They’re everywhere, in every yard. But they wont hang out in site if they have nothing to feed on.
7) Trash in garage is a bad idea in my mind, because garage is semi-outside, so you are putting your trash outside in advance, attracting bugs. Although if I had a trash can INSIDE that was infected with maggots, the garage is probably where I would put it. If I had a garage…
8) It’s not like they are roaches, man!
9) Maybe you should place some roadkill outside your garage, to attract all the maggots away. Please take pictures. MUAHAHAHAHA>
10) I hope at some point you said “My god, it’s full of maggots!” Because that would be funny.
11) I hope you didn’t THROW AWAY your clothes that you put in the trash bags.
12) There is no #13.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Oh I remember what #12 was really supposeds to be! I’ll have to call it #14, since I already said there is no #13..
14) When I was 3, my mom let me play outside in the garden in front of our townhouse for a bit. When she came back to check on me, 3-year-old Clint was covered head-to-toe in maggots!! She screamed and had to hose me off… haha.
They also wrote “666″ in my forehead when I was in the crib.
August 23rd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
[shudder]
I will never ever have a guinea pig again because of the experiences I had cleaning it’s cage. Yuck!!!!!!! (Of course, that can be blamed on us not cleaning it’s cage as much as we should, but still!)
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I assume you had maggots in its cage…
August 23rd, 2007 at 2:58 pm
@ClintJCL:
1) I was taking the trash out, that’s when I noticed the maggots. I didn’t want them on me when I pulled the bag out, and I didn’t want them spilling out onto my garage floor, so that’s why I initially tried to kill the ones on the edge of the bag and those just inside the top of the bag. Prevention. But that was before I realized that they were already on the floor.
2) I did stomp some of them, but I was worried that they would start climbing up my shoes/pants if I used my foot too much. While stomping one, another could easily hop on between my treads, and get a free ride into my house (or wherever I was headed next).
3) I’m not sure if they died. I didn’t stick around for 30 minutes to find out, and I haven’t opened the garage door yet today. If I find corpses within white blotches on the floor, next time I go out, I will let you know.
4) Whatever, you’re just afraid to admit that you got all turned on thinking about me showering!
5) I didn’t bathe in bleach. But the thought crossed my mind. I’d probably wuss out anyways, because of the potential for severe pain where the sun don’t shine! Ouch!
6) Eh, we have some people come out regularly to treat our interior and exterior, and if we need them anytime in between, they come out for free. We could use a touch up anyways, because I’m seeing these bugs downstairs more often than I’d like to (which is NEVER), anyway.
7) Yeah, we used to keep the BIG trash can in the garage, because it was convenient. But it got stinky in the summer, last year, so we keep that outside now. We just keep one trash can in the garage, which is pretty much just used when our car/van trash bags get too full. I’m thinking the vehicle trash bags will go in the kitchen trash, from now on, because that gets taken out like every day or two.
8) No, they’re not roaches, but they’re tiny, clingy, nearly invisible, and nearly invincible, too. I don’t like them. I’ve never had to deal with roaches, so the only thing I have to compare them with is other bugs I’ve had in my house. Earwigs in our basement, at our old house, were worse than these maggots, I’ll admit that much. But at least I could see them easier, because they were bigger and dark brown/black, on a light brownish (I think) carpet.
9) I thought about trying to lure them out of the garage with some food or something, but I figured I’d just attract MORE bugs from outside, so I didn’t.
10) Nope, but I did say “maggots, maggots, everywhere!”
11) No, I didn’t throw my clothes away. I just wanted some form of containment, in case any maggots came in with me, until I had a chance to throw my clothes in the laundry. I put my shoes in a separate bag, because they had squished maggots on them, as well as some poison cocktail that I didn’t want to get on my clothes (or anything else in the house). I will throw the shoes in the laundry, too.
12) oh
14) Haha! Wish she’d taken a picture (and given it to you, and you’d posted it on flickr)!
Who wrote 666 on your forehead, the maggots, or your parents? Or is that question redundant? Are you actually a human-fly hybrid, similar to Brundlefly? That would explain why you always vomit on your food before you eat it, and why you lack “human reason and compassion”.
August 23rd, 2007 at 3:00 pm
GWAR LYRICS
“Maggots”
Vile forms of Necros lie rotting my mind
Feasting like maggots - maggots in flesh
So left your ruined cortex behind
Now the maggot knows glee as it nibbles on your spine!
[Chorus:]
Maggots! Maggots!
Maggots are falling like rain!
Putrid pus-pools vomit blubonic plague
The bowels of the beast reek of puke
How to describe such vileness on the page
World maggot waits for the end of the age!
[Chorus]
Beneath a sky of maggots I walked
Until those maggots began to fall
I gaped at God to receive my gift
Bathed in maggots till the planet shit
[Repeat chorus a lot]
August 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 pm
@carolyncasl:
eww! well, guinea pigs seem to be stinky rodents anyways, kind of like ferrets, and ClintJCL.
August 23rd, 2007 at 3:10 pm
@ClintJCL:
“I assume you had maggots in its cage…”
No, when I saw him last, he was trying to deal with a major system failure. I don’t think I have a cage big enough to hold him, anyway.
August 23rd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
hahha, good one!