What gross little thing is living in my apartment?
Asked by
sophied (
106
)
September 28th, 2009
Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures before throwing them out the window, but in the past two days I’ve found two of these little guys. One was in some tissue paper that was wrapping a sweater (taken directly out of a suitcase from New York), and the other in a cardboard box under my bed (in Paris). They’re tiny, about the size of a grain of rice, black or dark brown, and have no legs that I can see. They look like a tadpole, but without the water. Gross. What are they and how do I get rid of them?
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6 Answers
Silverfish do have legs, though they’re not easily visible as one rushes to hurl them out the window, and they do look a bit tadpole-ish.
This might be your new friends:
From Wikipedia: “The fur beetle or carpet beetle (Attagenus pellio) is an important pest damaging stored products for instance furs, skins , textiles and grain.
Attagenus pelio is a 4 mm-6-long oval shaped insect with two patches of white hair on the elytra.”
Nasty fuckers. Here are some more pictures (where legs are not aparent): http://www.entomologi.se/cgi-bin/enter.cgi?iljwhat=4030
They’re definitely not silverfish. They’re a lot smaller, no legs, and not near any water. I’ve seen silverfish before, and these are not them.
I have a bad feeling that they’re carpet beetles. Assuming that’s what it is, how do I get rid of them?
NB I checked out some pictures of carpet beetles. I’m pretty positive that what I saw are the larvae. I saw some beetle-like things a few months ago, vacuumed well, and didn’t have a problem again. But now that I saw the larvae I’m relatively sure I need to do a deeper clean. How?
Here is an article on Getting Rid of Carpet Beetles.
Good luck!
Sounds like a case of Zombie Kitteh, these little bugs often follow the Zombie kitteh in the hopes of scavaging the brainless victem after said evilkat has had it’s fill.
uh oh, I’m allergic to cats!
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