Moths are a popular pest for wool area carpets

Today I was messing round with the settings of my blog and found something very interesting. When you are on the dashboard of your Blogger blog under the title of your blog is the list of settings, design, and stats, click on stats. Here you will find a wealth of information such as:

• How many people looked at your blog today, weekly and monthly
• What blog posts has the most visits
• How people found your blog
• Where your readers are located

I clicked on the "more" tab beside the traffic sources and found out what keywords and phrases people are using when they find my blog. I also found out that people from all over the world are reading my blog not just in the US and Canada, but also in Russia, India and Spain. That is pretty cool for my little rug cleaning blog to be read that far away.

The most reoccurring search terms used are larvae in rugs, carpet moth images, larvae found in carpet or more specifically MOTHS.

I have written many times about moths and for good reason. Next to pet accidents, moths are the most common problem for wool area carpets. A lot of the rugs we get in for moth treatment, the owners didn't know their rug had moths.

Whenever we receive a call from a client who is inquiring about rug cleaning and they mention that their rug is in storage or just sitting in the basement the chances of their rug having moths is high. Any wool rug that has not been cleaned before storing is prime for moth larvae to eat and cause damage.

When a rug is brought to Luv-A-Rug for cleaning we would prefer that you not vacuum the rug before hand. If you vacuum your rug we may miss seeing the evidence of moth larvae activity, and the eggs may still be in your rug. Getting rid of the eggs is very hard because they are attached to the bottom of the wool fibers and vibrating the rug may not loosen them, then your rug is returned home and the eggs hatch and the larva start eating your rug.

Here is more about the life cycle of a clothes moth, prevention and elimination.

Always vacuum your entire rug and get your rugs professionally cleaned at least once a year.

Thanks for reading, RugloverMary, your moth larva specialist.

Live Moth Larva

On Tuesday of this week, a wool hand tufted area rug came in for cleaning. The client told me that the rug had been stored for awhile.

When I hear that a dirty rug was stored I look for moth activity. I didn't find moth damage, I found something much more exciting.

I found live moth larva eating the rug!

I grabbed my little video camera and taped a great little video showing the little guys at work.

When I went to upload the video I ended up deleting it instead. Yup, I was smart. Since the rug was already in our moth treatment there was no way to re-do the video until next time I get a rug with live larva.

I was really excited to show you the larva because these guys had just hatched. Some of them were very small, smaller than the width of the wool fibers.

This little guy was the biggest one. He was close to cocooning, judging by his size.

I found at least 10 larva, but there were more I am sure.

Since it is really hard to find the eggs we must do our moth treatment to all rugs we find with evidence of moth activity. It takes just one male and female egg to hatch and you rug can be damaged.
Here is one of the smaller larva. When I started moving the fibers around with my pen, most of the larva disappeared.

Moth damage isn't usually caught in this early stage. It isn't until they have eaten a noticeable hole or a professional has pointed it out the empty larva casings.

When I unrolled the rug I had disturbed them and they started to move, it is easier to notice them, since dirt doesn't wiggle around.

I noticed the one first and after I found him, finding the smaller ones was easy after that.
There will be no noticeable damage to this rug because they were caught early.

I am glad that the client had mentioned that the rug was in stored. If he hadn't said anything and I forgot to ask, the unhatched eggs would probably have survived the cleaning and damage could have occurred.

How could the eggs survive the badgering and cleaning process?

The female moth attaches the eggs to the bottom of the wool fibers with a glue like fluid. This makes the eggs hard to remove by vibration and vacuuming. The eggs are very small, less than 1 mm in diameter, and up to one hundred can be laid by a single female moth.

Moth's do serious damage to wool area rugs that is why we will not clean an area rug if we find evidence of moth activity.

Remember to vacuum your entire area rug often and get it professionally cleaned at least once a year.

Thanks for reading, RugloverMary