Can you identify this moth? 19 January 2019

[Marc]

It is approximately 1 cm in length. The pictures were taken with a cheapie USB microscope, so not the greatest. Color is more to a light brown. Darker pictures are a lighting issue.

Still photos: Moth found in a house

Best actual color of the moth (above).

 

[John Broomfield]

Sad to say it looks like a Cloth Moth:

Tineola bisselliella - Wikipedia

 

[Marc]

I had bought 5 pounds of shelled walnuts from a California nut company and didn't notice anything at first. I saw a few weird moths like this around the house and caught one without squishing it. I had an old USB microscope and got carried away with the videos when I looked at it and saw it squeezing out eggs. Anyway, I tracked the source to the walnuts. They came in a thick plastic bag.

It's a 'pantry moth'

 

[John Broomfield]

Comparatively speaking that may be good news!

The larvae are much bigger and do less damage than those of the Cloth Moths’.

Loving the PestWiki BTW.

 

[Marc]

It's not an issue for me because those walnuts were the only foodstuff not in a sealed container. As to the walnuts, the birds will happily eat them and any larvae. I'd contact the seller but I know how they react - "They weren't contaminated when we shipped them." I once bought a US$1250 hand made table, and about 6 months later I noticed a few small mounds of what looked like sawdust on the top. Wipe it away and there was a small hole at each mound location. Contacted a friend that is into wood. They were powder post beatles and he told me to get the table out of the house immediately because the little buggers work slowly but can do as much damage as termites. He explained that the person who made it had not cured the wood in an oven properly (if at all). He cut and processed a lot of wood for cabinets and such and had a big walk-in sized oven for curing and drying his wood.





I did contact the seller (JHE's Log Furniture Place) and he said the table must have been infected after I received it which would have been highly unlikely according to the pest control person who checked the house and found nothing.

I put the table out in the back yard and within a couple of years it was totally eaten up.

As to the pantry moths, had they been clothes moths I would have been bummed out. Getting rid of them is quite difficult.

 

[Jessterish]

thanks for mentioning the furniture seller's name. I shall avoid them.

The pest wiki entry for the moth is terribly written, far too much repetition and it sounds like google translate was used several time.

 

[Marc]

JHE's - I was doing a remodel and ordered several things from them around the same time. They sell beautiful furniture, but their response to me when I contacted them about the table was simply unacceptable. I bought a log futon from them and went through a lot of problems. One of several - A few dowels were missing and they sent me unfinished ones as replacements:



Some pictures of the futon problems, such as cracks and split wood.

Now this one will get you - When I received it I had the delivery team put the box in the garage because I had to get a few friends to help me get the parts inside and assembled. We opened the box and - No kidding - A snake slithered out. Not just any snake, either. A poisonous rattle snake. That was the last thing I expected. I'm just glad we opened the box in the garage... This is the snake:



I was totally disgusted with their customer service. They would have had a hard time explaining how this type of snake would have turned up in southern Ohio and crawled into the box, but I'm sure they would have said it was impossible for it to have come from their company. I did get a few pictures of it with my phone. It slithered out into the grass and disappeared. I'm not particularly afraid of snakes, but I wasn't about to try to capture a rattle snake.

I will say I bought a number of pieces of furniture from them and only the table and the futon had problems (I do consider a rattle snake a problem). See: Elsmar Ranch 2012 - Still Renovating after all these years

I also bought a big log bed frame from them.