THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 24, 1997 TAG: 9701230132
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: OVER EASY
SOURCE: JO-ANN CLEGG
LENGTH: 64 lines
In the 38 years I've been keeping house, I have never had a moth. Until last fall, that is. That's when a couple flew in with their tiny little moth suitcases and set up housekeeping in my walk-in closet. Two days later, they emerged. One looked smug, the other looked pregnant.
Still it didn't dawn on me what was going on. Refugees from the backyard jungle are pretty frequent visitors around here. I figure any flying object that shows up in the house either spends its time pollinating my plants or ridding my flower beds of unwanted predators.
These two had far more destructive things in mind. Like raising a family of kids that had the appetites of elephants. Just before Thanksgiving, I took my cashmere blazer out of the closet.
``Who dropped a cigarette ash on my sleeve?'' I yelled.
``Don't look at me, I don't smoke,'' snarled Charlie the Lhasa. ``For that matter, I don't remember anybody coming into the house who does,'' he added.
I looked more closely. ``Surely that can't be moth damage,'' I said.
``Want to bet?'' the fuzz ball with an attitude asked.
I took the jacket to the cleaners to see what could be done. ``Sure looks like moth holes to me,'' the clerk told me. ``I've never had moths in my house,'' I told her. ``Everybody does sooner or later,'' she said. ``Let's see what a cleaning will do.''
Not much, as it turned out. Still, I was not willing to admit the obvious. At least not until that day just before Christmas when I looked down and spotted five small holes in the sweater I was wearing.
Finally, I had to give in. Moths had indeed taken over my closet. Make that closets. The jacket and sweater were kept in two separate places.
``What do you know about this?'' I asked the fuzz ball.
``I thought you'd never get around to asking,'' he told me. ``The noise of those guys chewing is keeping me awake nights.''
``Be serious,'' I told him, ``you've slept through two lightening strikes, a near tornado and hurricane force winds but the sound of moths chewing through cashmere ruins your sleep?''
``I react to anything that tries to invade the premises. Trust me, those guys are an invasion force of the first magnitude,'' he snarled.
I had to agree with him on that point. Not only are the little critters noisy chewers, they have expensive taste. The average price of any garment in my closet is $12.67. The average price of the two the baby moths cut their teeth on was $124.49. That's not what I paid for them, but it's what they would have cost if they hadn't been on their final markdowns.
I debated what to do about the moths and the damaged pieces. Deciding how to handle the moths was easy. I bought several packages of moth cakes, came home and installed them in all my closets. I hate the smell, but there are times when only drastic measures will do.
Then I checked the yellow pages for someone who practices the almost forgotten art of reweaving. I turned the blazer and sweater over to a competent and sympathetic lady who assured me she could fix them like new, for a price.
It wasn't as much as they were worth, but it was darned near as much as I had paid for them. Still, both she and I agreed, they were worth salvaging.
So far I haven't found any more damage to clothes, but I'm not sure what mothball fumes are doing to our lungs and brains.
Charlie, however, is his usual cantankerous self. ``A dog needs a gas mask around here,'' he told me the other day. ``Quit complaining,'' I answered. ``At least you don't have to listen to those guys chewing any more.''
``Actually,'' he said, ``I was growing kind of fond of them.''