April 29, 2013

The Frightening Attack of the KnickerMoths

Yesterday I had to concede defeat and accept that my home had been colonised by weevils. Tiny, bizarrely gravity-defying weevils who leave the sanctuary of the cereal box and crawl across my ceiling.

Clearly, these weevils aren't particularly rational, because Blind Freddy can see that there are no cornflakes on the roof, but plenty of world leaders have been irrational. And the weevils are my leaders now. They have invaded my home, thwarted every effort on my part* to remove them, and have partied on my ceiling (literally, not metaphorically as the Lionel Ritchie song would suggest) until I am forced to accept their victory.

I turned to social media to bemoan my fate, because if one's life has been destroyed by vermin, the care and support of people you don't know can really help to lift your spirits. But social media is a strange beast - not quite as strange as cornflake-hunting ceiling-dwelling worms, but still - and somehow the conversation turned to moths. Hardly surprising, really, as they are closely related to weevils (in a chicken-and-egg sort of way, which I shall not attempt to deconstruct now.)

"You should write about your fight with the pantry moths," said Lisa. "Just don't forget the 'r'". And I couldn't have forgotten the 'r'. Until the 'r' was forcibly removed, and I could think of nothing else.

"Panties" (ugh) shown not Blogger's Own


Panty moths. Panty moths. Moths in my panties.

Years ago, when I was at school, a teacher referred to a passage from the Bible in which God sent a fly into a man's ear to send him crazy**. Since then, I have had a morbid fear of insects entering my bodily cavities, whether they make me crazy, or just give me unpleasant flutters. And aside from neurotic fantasies, I HATE the word panties.

"Can we call them knickermoths?" I asked. Knickermoths do have a nice ring to them, reminiscent of nineteenth century undergarments that have been in a dank cellar for too long.

"G-Moths?" my friend Annie suggested, and that was probably as good as it was going to get.

And it was good. Because later that night, when my Weevil Master commanded me to Google Panty Moths, I got a huge surprise.

They do exist. And you can buy them right here.

Not that I would recommend them. No-one wants moths in their panties, or in the panties of anyone else. If you know what I mean.

But what the Weevil Master commands, I do. I am beyond saving.

I just hope that it's not too late for you.

*and the part of my friend Jodie, to whom I was deeply grateful, until I realised she FAILED. **I give no guarantee that such a passage exist. Many of my teachers were a little unhinged.

23 comments:

  1. I hate that word too
    bb

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  2. And what did I get from all of this? Remembering being told the same "fly in the ear" story in Hebrew School. As for the moths in panties ... well, I'll take the high road on that one.

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  3. I did my nursing training at the old Mater way back when the nurses quarters were cubicles not rooms.The walls did not go up to the ceiling so we could hear the noises from each others 'room' and see the lights on.Because of this we would often leave our lights off if we came in late so as to not wake everyone up.
    One night my friend in the room next to mine came in late after an evening shift and in the dark decided to lay her nightie and undies on her bed ready for her to put on after her shower.I could hear her quietly go out to the bathroom.When she was done she crept back in,still leaving the light off so as to not wake anyone.Suddenly she let out the loudest scream,lights went on and the whole floor was awake.
    She had put her undies on in the dark....big mistake...and could feel something big crawling around inside them !!
    As we had no screens on our windows we would often get huge flying cockroaches in the area outside our rooms and one had found its way into her undies!
    From that night on we always took our clothes to the bathroom and never ever ever got dresses in the dark again :)

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  4. I'm with you Bianca lol ... Kerri not only have you been invaded by weevils but SUPER weevils, I have to say I have not come across these larger than life creatures. Scared to death after Deby's tale. ... I will be checking my underwear with a magnifying glass before it touches my body.

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  5. I'm reading this with about a hundred flied zooming around my lounge room because one of the kids left the screen door open. Am now terrified that one of them is going to fly into my ear. Fark.

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  6. I shall never think of getting into a girl's pants, in the same way again.....

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  7. 'Panties' make me squirm (and not in a good way)!

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  8. Haha! Don't think I've ever had any of those deviant moths...but won't be smug as we have
    cockroaches, intermittent nits and the occasional mouse! :)

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  9. Folding the household washing on the bed last night, what should fly out of my boxer shorts, but a moth! Interesting that "boxer shorts moths" doesn't have same ring to it as "knickermoths" nor "panty moths"!

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  10. I have a fear of insects flying into my ear as I sleep I now can't sleep unless my hair covers my ear that is exposed. Weird habit.

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  11. OH MY GOD SERIOUSLY???? Can you find out where it came from? I have Googled and Googled to no avail...

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  12. Oh dear lord. That's one of the most frightening stories I've ever heard...

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  13. And if it does, it will fly round and round till it makes you crazy...

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  14. DO you think of getting into a girl's pants?

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  15. Um, all the time...... I'm running out of time, Kerri.... :-)

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  16. lovelifeandbeautytherapyMay 7, 2013 at 4:46 PM

    The reason I clicked on this story is that knicker (panty) moths happened to me in real, horrible, panic inducing life... I was camping at the beach with a group of friends and we all hung our swimmers on a big outdoors clothes line to keep them dry between swims. One afternoon we decided to go for a swim and a surf so I grabbed my swimwear off the line and did a super quick change in the tent. Then, just before I was about to head out to the beach I stopped in at the toilets....and out of the bottom of my bikini pants fell A DEAD MOTH!! Yep, a moth had decided to die and chose my swimwear as its final resting place. I was much closer to a moth than I ever wanted to be and I am now really scared of them (and always check my pants before putting them on).

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