Maggots in carpet HELP!

[Strawblue]

Not for the squeamish…

Firstly, I’d like to say that we have a clean and tidy house before anyone suggests this could only happen in a dirty home.

On Friday I discovered a dead mouse tucked behind the sofa. When I picked it up there was tiny maggots underneath and a few moving around the area. We think it may have been there for up to two weeks as our cat can very occasionally hunt and does majorly sulk when we go on holiday which we did at half-term.

I think I have eradicated most of them by visually collecting them, vacuuming, sprinkling salt liberally and vacuuming again later on, and have used our steam carpet machine twice and gone over the area so many times the carpet is very wet (far more than what the instructions say to do).

However after towards steaming today 4 more of the disgusting things came up out of the carpet after it had been left for over 24 hours to dry. I don’t know what to do now as the typical methods online aren’t possible and seem to be mostly US websites -

-Boric acid/Borax - says it’s the best but this is banned in the UK/EU since 2010
-bleach/boiling water/vinegar - can’t see
how this won’t destroy the carpet

• Permethrin is highly recommended but it’s toxic to cats

-suggestions to use dog shampoo but one of the ingredients is toxic to cats -carpet cleaner with insecticide but VAX don’t seem to do this

Any suggestions please before we call pest control? I suspect we have most of them but it’s the larvae we are worried about and we daren’t put the sofa back yet 🤮

Won't there be a finite number, as they are emerging from eggs?
To be honest, I would just inspect and remove daily

Oh god that sound horrific - who knew this was even a thing?!

I'd go for boiling water, just apply as much as you need rather than flooding it and leave to dry. If room is adequately ventilated it should be OK!

Agree - there will be a finite number. Put salt or bicarbonate on over night, then hoover and steam clean each day until no new ones appear.

The maggots are the lavae, eventually they will turn into a chrysalis then a fly, obbviously you don't want hundreds of flies in your house but if you have taken away the food source there shouldn't be too many flies. With flies they like to go towards the light so you can use that to tempt them away. The mature flies will want to lay eggs on something to feed them but you have removed the mouse so it will have to look elsewhere. I would just continue with the steaming that you are doing.

Yeah as others have said, you don't need pest control. It's not like fleas, they won't take over the whole house. Worst that happens if you ignore the problem is they'll eventually fly out the window

Try sand. I had them in my bin a couple of years ago and sand was the only thing that finished them off

They'll die as they have nothing to eat. And they'll dry out if you stop adding water to the carpet. So you can ignore them.

Maybe spraying the carpet with Raid fly killer would kill any remaining eggs before they they turn into maggots.