What do you recommend ? I forgot to unpack two knitted mink items. A Stole and a Bolero Jacket….last spring. They were in a box all summer. When I discovered the box with the items, there were white maggots on the Fur. I dusted them off and hung up the items in the air. Don’t know where the maggots went, what do you recommend? Fur Cleaning for the Fur pieces or one of your products??? Please advise. Thank you.
This is a tough one. Since the infestation has seemingly relocated, I don’t know that a garment treatment with our products is warranted. But I do recommend getting them dry cleaned. This will no doubt kill most anything left on them if the cleaning is done by traditional dry cleaning methods.
Furthermore, I’m not able to tell 100% for sure what the pest involved may have been. I’m thinking it could have been clothing mothes but cigarettte beetles will commonly infest clothing as will carpet beetles. All these pests require different treatments and the list of treatment options are too many to isolate just 1-2 general applications that would cover it all. That being said you still need to do something or else it could turn out that a really bad problem is being missed.
For now, I suggest you install some of the “pheromone” traps we have listed in our “most likely pest” articles. As you’ll see, we have different traps for the more common insects that could have been on the fur. And if you review each article for these pests, you might be even be able to identify which of them it is based on something our article talks about. Once you know the exact species of insect involved, you’ll probably need to treat because it’s not likely the only place they’ve been living was on that fur. I’m willing to bet they’re somewhere else in your home right now and could be doing similar damage to some rugs, furniture, drapery or other clothing. Unfortunately there isn’t any practical way to proceed until we either know a) where they’re active or b) what species of insect they might be. Once we ascertain that information, we should be able to proceed with a logical approach to getting the problem resolved.
Here is the “short” list of what I’m willing to bet these guys were:
Carpet Beetles: http://www.bugspray.com/articles98/carpetbeetle.html
Cigarette Beetles: http://www.bugspray.com/article/cigarettebeetle.html
Clothing Moths: http://www.bugspray.com/catalog/products/page765.html
Drugstore Beetles: http://www.bugspray.com/catalog/products/page1017.html
Each one of the articles above covers all you’ll need to know about each pest. And in each article you’ll find links to “glue type” traps that can be installed in your home to both “monitor” and trap any foraging pests. Once we start collecting some adult stages of this pest in a trap, we’ll be able to identify what it is and from there, determine the best treatment option to get any problem under control.
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