Texas Pest Control Association

We can safely say that every kitchen either has had pantry pests, has them now, or will have them. They are a universal problem.
      By pantry pests, we mean the various moths and beetles that infest stored food. You know the ones- even your grandmother had problems with these. There are dozens of different species that infest our food. The Indian meal moth is by far the most common pantry pest we see, so we’ll describe it in more detail here.
      The Indian meal moth was named by an early American entomologist who found it feeding on corn meal (which used to be called Indian meal, hence the name). Their larvae feed on a huge variety of foods including any kind of coarsely ground grain or finely ground flour. They love cake and muffin mixes. They also feed on dried fruits, dried milk, popcorn, nuts, chocolate, candy, “natural” health foods, and spices, as well as bird seed and dry pet food.
      Although some infestations in homes begin by moths flying in from outdoors, most problems start when infested food is brought home from grocery stores. Mice can make the problem even worse- they tend to hoard food in hidden caches, creating another food source for the hungry moth larvae.
      The Indian meal moth is small, with a wingspan of about 5/8”. No other moth has the distinctive colors of the forewings of this insect- they are a whitish gray close to the body, and a reddish brown or coppery color on the outer 2/3 of the wings. The caterpillars spin webbing wherever they go.

A study reported recently in the Journal of Medical Entomology confirmed what some pet owners already know: that certain areas on a cat’s body have more cat fleas than other areas. The study (done on stray cats) found that the neck area of a cat had the greatest density of fleas. The neck and head together accounted for nearly half of all fleas found. The dorsal (back) area was the next most flea-infested area, followed by the cat’s underside, legs and tail.
       These differences in the concentration of fleas can be explained largely by the grooming habits of cats. Cats spend most of their grooming time licking and biting their fur with their tongue and teeth. But they can’t do this on their head and neck. Cats do scratch-groom their heads and necks with their hind claws, and this may dislodge some fleas. However, cats only spend about 1/50th of their grooming time scratch-grooming their head and neck; the rest of the time they are using their mouth to groom themselves.

Q. After living many generations underground in sewers, do rats sometimes mutate and become blind?
A. This is a common myth, but in reality they never become blind. And it is also a myth that rats living in sewers always stay there. These rats rend to move up and down at different times, travelling through various burrows and other openings. They will often spend some of their lives above ground, especially when the temperature above ground is moderate.
It is true that rats don’t depend on their eyesight in their day to day activities as much as they rely on their other senses. Their sense of touch, using their whiskers and other hairs, is highly developed. And they have a peculiar ability to remember pathways simply from their muscle movement. This advanced “muscle sense” allows them to quickly learn a particular route to food, water or shelter, simply from the twists and turns they have to make to get there.
Rats can also hear sounds we can’t- they can detect sounds far into the ultrasound range, outside our range of hearing. They also have a very acute sense of smell that they rely on far more than sight. These creatures indeed have very advanced senses that allow them to thrive and multiply in a wide range of man-made environments.