Maggots

Yes, maggots. Ridgecrest has so many opportunities to observe wildlife, I just would never have suspected. One horrible day in Boulder we found maggots under the tray that holds the cats' dishes, so I guess you can have them anywhere. But here in Ridgecrest we have them all the time.

The first time we saw a lot of them, we realized they were coming from underneath the trash. We had bought a new tall kitchen garbage can to keep the twins out of the garbage, but we didn't realize that it had an opening at the bottom. Even though we were using plastic garbage sacks, there must have been food falling down around the sacks, or holes in the sacks or something. Anyway, we had a LOT of maggots down there. So we switched to a simple plastic garbage can that we could hang on the wall.

In Colorado we had compost bins in the backyard, and we dumped all our non-meat food garbage in them (and put our meat garbage in the freezer until garbage pick-up day), so our garbage can held mostly plastic. But here in our rental house in Ridgecrest we don't have a compost bin, and the babies waste a lot of food (throw it on the floor, etc.), so we are always throwing food in the garbage. It takes a long time to fill up the garbage can, and it gets very hot in the kitchen, so the garbage can (which doesn't have a good lid) is a fly's paradise. Also, we have a LOT of flies. Sometimes there will be 30 flies sitting in the bay window in our kitchen. It's hard to swat them, because I can't reach all the way into the bay window, so Rocket Boy goes outside and takes the screen off the window, and I swoosh them towards the opening with the (otherwise useless) fly swatter. But we only do that every few days. Meanwhile, when I'm not looking the flies are presumably laying eggs in the icky garbage.

All this leads to maggots. This morning (garbage day), I took the sack of garbage out to the big bin in the street. A few minutes later Rocket Boy started finding maggots on the floor. Did they somehow leap from the garbage bag as I was tying it shut? Can maggots leap? They have no legs, according to a maggot website I found (http://www.howtogetridofstuff.com/pest-control/how-to-get-rid-of-maggots/). (Isn't the Internet wonderful? There are good cockroach websites too.)

Whether or not they can leap, maggots can move very fast. Apparently they are looking for a moist place to form a pupa and then hatch into a fly. (It is not moist in our house! This is the desert! 10% humidity or less!) We found them all over the kitchen, the dining area, the living room, down the hallway. We were frantically sweeping them up, then dumping them on the front lawn (where we also dump our cockroaches). The babies were "helping" by crawling all over and probably eating what they found.

At least, according to the maggot website, eating a maggot will probably not harm you.

Our new plan is to use the disposal more, don't let food sit around in the garbage can for days, buy a new garbage can with a lid, get rid of flies as soon as we see them, and hunt for these "moist places" where the maggots are forming pupas.

One of Rocket Boy's colleagues thinks they should get "hazard pay" for living out here. Sigh.