Off the beaten path

Prior to moving to Clinton, CT, I had never lived outside of a city. As such, I’ve never had experiences with nature creep – that is, the slow but inevitable incoming tide of nature as it slithers, wriggles, and scrabbles into, around, and through a home. Prior to 2013, I only knew a pest as a mouse or a fly. Oh how unexposed I was! Since purchasing this home, every year we’ve fought off a different invader.

Year 1: Drain flies

Drain flies live in drains! Imagine that! Thankfully we caught the issue before it became a problem. We bought BIO DRAIN by Invade and it worked pretty well. It also smelled pleasantly citrusy and was easy to use.

Year 2: Carpet moths

If weird little cocoons show up on your carpet, be forewarned your carpet is being slowly consumed by this bug that matures to a moth. Thankfully, the treatment is easy: Vacuum like you’ve never vacuumed before! Also? Ceder and lemongrass spray around the perimeter of a room. It took us a solid 30 days to rid ourselves of these pesky bust mostly benign bugs.

Year 3: Artillery Fungus

What the heck is artillery fungus? It’s a spore that lives in mulch and launches tiny black modules all over your property. So far, this is the most annoying pest I’ve encountered. These spores can fire 20 feet in the air! AND, you can’t even pressure wash the spores off of siding you have to individually scrape off each one AND THEN you have to go around with a toothbrush and scrub off the residue.

How does one prevent artillery fungus from attacking your home or car? You can’t. It just happens with Mulch.

Occasionally (rarely) I miss the nature-less city.

One thought on “Off the beaten path

  • 10/19/2016 at 12:53 pm
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    I’m sorry that you had to deal with artillery fungus, but I had never heard about it and really enjoyed reading about it. Interesting stuff. Growing up all we every got in our mulch was stinkhorn and scrambled egg fungus.

    Do you have wool rugs? I’ve had problems with wool moths in my clothes and I’ve been looking at rugs for the living room and I am afraid of getting any wool b/c I just don’t want to deal with the moth problem potentially getting worse.

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