Beetles

Maybe a month ago, I started seeing odd, little black beetles around the two back rooms of my house. They were maybe 1 millimeter by 2-3 millimeters, with a single proboscis emerging from the face. Research didn't turn anything up, so I finally went to Lowe's and picked up some bug spray and sprayed it around all the walls and crevices. Then I didn't see very many beetles for a while, but there was a sudden surge maybe a week ago (new hatch, presumably). I had already taken some old potting soil and some unshelled nuts out into the (then) freezing outdoors, in the hopes that one of those was the breeding ground. No luck. Finally, today, I found the source.

I had gotten several varieties of rice from that Thai store down in Layton. I was trying to find my new bamboo steamer, as I've decided to let my dad burn the old one (falling apart), and had to move all this rice around, looking for it. One of the packages caught my eye. It was a package of black rice, but there seemed to be an awful lot of white powder in with it. Plus I could hear sort of...crunching noises, emanating from within. I took the bag outside and threw it into the yard. The bag broke open, so I went to take a look. Yup. The bag was chock full of the blasted beetles. I sprayed the heck out of it...and will probably shovel it into the trash cart sometime tomorrow.

I am reasonably certain that the beetles originated within that bag, but, unfortunately, they had found their way into some other bags of rice in the same cupboard. So I threw them out as well (less dramatically). I also threw out some other stuff that probably was okay, but that had been open and in the same cupboard. Anyway, I am pleased to have found the source, but irritated that I had to get rid of so much other stuff. I had looked in that cupboard before, as it was near where the beetles seemed to be thickest, but there was no obvious sign of them anywhere inside...until I looked at the bags of rice. *sighs*