Maggots - how do they know where to point themselves? (Light hearted)

[Gingernaut]

The set up - I am paranoid about my wheelie bins smelling and attracting flies and other vermin.

My rubbish is always bagged, sometimes double bagged and waste food is frozen in a freezer bag and put out last thing on Tuesday evening.

The wheelie bin is washed out once a month. It currently smells of Zoflora Mandarin & Lime.

To be clear - there is no raw rubbish of any description in my wheelie bin.

My bins are emptied every other week, so twice in a month.

Two weeks ago, I moved my bins to put the rubbish out for the bin men and found nut shells (neighbours) and maggots in the corner under and around my rubbish bin.

I swept them up and away. Without fail, every maggot that survived the initial brushing and which ended up halfway to the kerb, did a 180 degree turn and headed back to the same corner I swept them from.

There was nothing to go back to - they were heading towards concrete and brick.

I swept them into the gutter.

The same thing happened today. I found cigarette ash (the neighbours chain smoke), nut shells (same scummy neighbours) and maggots in the same corner.

The maggots were huddling towards a spot by the doorstep - there was nothing there, but dust.

I checked under the bin, there is nothing there except dust and hair.

I swept the ash, shells and maggots towards the kerb and gutter - one of the neighbours was washing his car and the waste water swept the dust, shells and maggots away.

The same thing happened as a fortnight ago.

The few maggots that survived the initial sweep and only made it halfway to the kerb did a 180 degree turn and started back towards the now clean point by my doorstep.

Do they point towards magnetic north? Are they trying to eat my house?

I don’t have answers, OP, but your spirit of enquiry is heartening.
Hopefully a maggot navigation expert will turn up soon.

At London zoo there is a sink thing full of maggots in the minibeast exhibit. Where do they get them from?? What happens to all the flies they turn into (quite regularly I’d imagine…?). (Sorry misses point but while we’re on maggots)

If they were under the bin with no food source, they were getting ready to pupate. Is your doorstep in the shade? Or were they just heading away from the sun?

Sorry forgot to say that they look for a dark dry place (ie under a bin) to pupate.

@Orangedaisy

At London zoo there is a sink thing full of maggots in the minibeast exhibit. Where do they get them from?? What happens to all the flies they turn into (quite regularly I’d imagine…?). (Sorry misses point but while we’re on maggots)

You can buy them, but they probably breed them and feed them to various reptiles etc before they pupate/turn into flies.

Boiling water is the only thing that gets rid of maggots.

About a week ago we had crazy bouts of heavy rain, DH called me downstairs to show me something.

There were loads of maggots wriggling up the outside (thank god) of our French windows. There was no food source or anything rotting, bins were clean. Nothing!

I told DH I was going back to bed to have a nervous breakdown.

Oddly they disappeared and we didn’t find the source despite (DH) searching everywhere.

@Twillow of course makes perfect sense. I feel quite stupid now 🤣

@frazzledasarock your Dh needs to learn there are some things you just don’t need to know!!

The maggots were small, about twice the length of a grain or rice.

They didn't seem big enough to pupate.

@Twillow, you are a star🌟

The front of the house gets a lot of sunshine through the day.

When it snows, the other side of the street is in shadow and the snow melts faster on my side of the street.

@borntobequiet

I don’t have answers, OP, but your spirit of enquiry is heartening. Hopefully a maggot navigation expert will turn up soon.

🤣🤣 my thoughts exactly! Hope someone can help, OP!

Thanks

Ah, they’re not ordinary maggots, they’re homing maggots.

Aw the poor souls, just trying to live their best squirmy lives and head in the right direction to fulfill their quest.

My doorstep isn't at the end of some maggot rainbow, is it?

I haven't trained them.

Maggots make me 🤮. This thread is making my skin crawl. But I'm still going to watch it. I need to know the answer in case it happens to me 😵

I have no idea, but it's probably the same primordial evil that leeches have.

I once lived in a house in a wood (just call me Gretel), and I had one season of leeches getting into the house.

They would park themselves on the floor, in the hallway, equidistant between the two walls! Smack bang in the middle of the carpet, OR at exactly 1.6m above ground on one of the walls. They'd reach out at a right angles to the surface and wave around hoping to catch an ankle or an ear perhaps < NE

I thought I was going mad, not as mad as measuring the fecking things, but there you go.

The spiders and other horrors pale compared to those evil creatures.

I suspect all of these satanic wigglers have inbuilt GPS.

The same applies to slugs, which were attracted to my garden in London despite gravel, slug beer traps and slug repellent. They've now hitched a lift?? 20 years later made it past the Ebbsfleet roadworks how?when no other fucker can decipher the diversion signs and hang out nightly on my garden furniture

Bin men came this morning and when I put the bins back there were more!!

All huddling in the same corner.

I have thoroughly examined the bottom of both bins (recycling and rubbish), there is nothing there.

Where are they coming from?

Is there a hole at the bottom of the place you put thee we bins or something allowing floes to lay eggs somewhere hidden?

Boiling water, just pour boiling water down where they are let it completely dry and put your bins back. Hopefully gets rid of them.

Nope.

No drains, no overflow, no holes in the bins - just cement, bricks and dust.

This is reminding me of a remarkable study into snails. They have a homing instinct which overrides eg being taking some distance and released into snail friendly habitat. Can’t remember the distance but the researchers marked their shell with snail friendly (again!) marker and they were discovered back in same gardens within days. Think of this whenever I regime any. At least they’ll have a journey I guess

They must be brick maggots - they are indeed eating your house.
Only eat clean houses though, so there's that....

Really not enjoying the thought of maggots getting swept up, aren't they all stuck in your broom?

Also feeling ashamed, I have never cleaned my wheelie bin. Is this something people do? It sounds hard, do you have to don a overall to do it?

@Somuddled

Really not enjoying the thought of maggots getting swept up, aren't they all stuck in your broom?

Also feeling ashamed, I have never cleaned my wheelie bin. Is this something people do? It sounds hard, do you have to don a overall to do it?

This is a DH job.

He power washes it I believe detergent and boiling water is also involved.

We have very clean bins.

We also have maggots crawling up the outside of our French window when it rains (well we did that one time).

I reckon it’s a DH problem that I have, his bin cleaning is bringing out the maggots clearly.