Maggots

electricitylikesme

Short story is I dumped out some of the cat's old food into the garbage and didn't put it out with haste. I've since gotten rid of that, killed all the ones around that area of the kitchen with boiling water (and draino) and carefully exterminated any further out.

Is there anything else I need to do other then kill any I may have missed? I've poured a lot of boiling water over the vinyl floor tiles to make sure I nailed the ones under there and levered up a particularly loose one just to thorough.

Should I be setting poisons or baits of any kind?

dispatch.o

Poison and Draino on tile flooring that your cat walks on is a very bad idea. Cat walks on floor, cat licks feet, cat developes crystals in his urine from failing kidneys.

Maggots aren't some super-hideous entity, they don't feed off the dreams of the living, they also don't eat wood or vinyl flooring. You could have just swept them up and made sure not to leave food out anymore.

Unknown

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LadyM

Was the garbage in an uncovered can? If you get a garbage can with a lid, the flies won't be able to get in there to lay their eggs.

If the garbage was covered, they must have laid the eggs earlier, before you tossed out the food, in which case just throw away food sooner than you have been.

I don't think setting out bait would really do anything . . . I mean, maggots live where they're born. For the adult flies, a flyswatter would be more practical than bait, IMO.

Oboro

Maggot and fly populations aren't self-sustaining if you don't let those conditions persist, and the current life cycle will peter out pretty fast even if there are any that you missed.

In the long run, you're far more likely to open a bag of feed with a pre-existing infestation than have this problem again if you either keep the can covered, or in a location away from flies. Do you keep your garbage cans in an internal garage or something similar?

We kept old food inside until we were ready to literally take it to the curb. We also bought a large plastic container that we scooped it out of, and just had its own lid. Taking an approach like this and just dumping it into a bag before hauling it out would probably be your best long-term bet, another advantage being that transferring from the bag to the container in the first place ensures you will get a good look and be able to see that there are no pre-existing infestations.

Trust me, the ones that come pre-packaged are far worse. ;(

jotate

I dated a farm girl once. Oh the horrors I've seen relating to maggots.

Maggots aren't a traditional infestation kind of thing. They're not gonna hide under your cabinets and come out for food at night. As was said, just making sure the food source is eliminated and that should pretty much shore up the problem.

Scumdogg

jotate wrote: »

I dated a farm girl once. Oh the horrors I've seen relating to maggots.

Try being married to someone in the veterinary field. I once got out of bed at like 2am to sit in the bathroom and pick maggots out of the eye socket of a hit-and-run kitten.

And yes, as someone said before, Draino on your floor is a far bigger problem than the maggots. Be damn sure you've cleaned all that up.