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.