If you haven't been to Texas or lived in Texas, you don't know what bugs are. There are all sorts of bugs for all sorts of seasons and most of them are HUGE. We had lived in Texas for about 3 years and never experienced the fated "weevil."
This summer, we had an Enrichment class at church about food storage and the person presenting talked about weevils and how to prevent them. We had lived in Texas for three years at that point and I had never found weevils in anything. Ironically, a few days later, I had my first encounter. I opened up a package of Rice a Roni and was thoroughly disgusted to see the little guys crawling all over in the box.
In our class (and from reading online), I learned that the eggs are already in a lot of products and if you freeze things (rice and grains) for 48 hours after you buy them, it should kill the eggs and prevent them from hatching. After my little experience, I started freezing everything, but one day I came home in a rush and forgot all about freezing my bag of rice. I hadn't thought about it since then.
Tonight, I opened up the bag to make dinner and there were the little guys again. Talk about killing your appetite - YUCK! The black and white drawing above doesn't do them justice, but the "real" pictures I found online were too disgusting to post.
Most of the time we really love living here, but it's times like these that life in Texas isn't all that!
5 comments:
It gives me the shivers just to think about those nasty little critters. I recently opened a container of whole wheat flour (that I had forgotten to freeze once I got it home). I seriously jump back 5 ft and screamed, and I am not a screamer. The WHOLE thing was crawling!! disgusting!!
Oh wow! I do not have experience with weevils here in Oregon, thank goodness. But now I'm realizing that I have them in their unhatched form anyway. Ugh!
Been there, done that. Darn it! They are disgusting. What makes we squirm is when I think about how many I have eaten and not even known it.
I didn't know about the freezing part. I should start doing that. I haven't see them yet and hopefully I never do. Yuck!
Try using bay leaves. Add 1 bay leaf to your storage container that you keep your sugar, flour, rice, etc. in. After a month, break the bay leaf in half to "refresh" it. It's an excellent bug deterrent and eco-friendly, too. =)
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