What the hell has been living in my woollens basket?

[AntiHop]

I have a small open wicker type basket where I keep my hats and scarfs.

I just went to sort it out for the winter and have found loads of dark blue eggs in there. Tiny, the size of a pin head. Then there are loads of cases, and little larvae are starting to come out of them.

I don't think they are clothes moths, as I've dealt with those before. These look different. These cases and flatter and darker. The eggs are much darker too. I don't know if this is because they've eaten my dark wool hat, but there is plenty of light wool stuff in there too.

This is the weird thing. The items I've seen the cases on, like my hat, don't seem to be damaged. When I've seen moth cases on things before, the damage was obvious. The damage in this case is on the wicker basket.

Any ideas please?

Not sure - but you need to burn it now.

We need photos.

Here's some photos.

Moth eggs

Move home taking only the clothes on your back

@sleepykits

Moth eggs

Which kind of moth though? Look totally different to the moth eggs I've seen from the small beige clothes moths.

Are you in the US, OP? Could be a painted tiger moth.

I will pray for you and your woolens.

Woollens even.

@BeautifulandWilfulandDead

Are you in the US, OP? Could be a painted tiger moth.

No, I'm in London.

Could they be carpet moths (Trichophaga tapetzella) rather than clothes moths ? I believe that carpet moths are darker than clothes (usually brown though rather than blue). I think they can sometimes take on the colour of whatever they're eating though - was there a blue scarf or something in there? As far as I know, both types eat both clothes and carpets. Sorry if it is, they're absolutely horrible and nigh on impossible to get rid of 😔

Book an exorcism

I agree with burning the basket with everything in it.

@SusanBAnthony999

Not sure - but you need to burn it now.

Yeah - people often say this on threads, and on this occasion I think they are right!

Whatever they are, you don't want them in your house, that's for sure.

It's frass, not eggs. Case bearing clothes moth.

butterfly-conservation.org/moths/case-bearing-clothes-moth

Yep those are clothes moths. The flatter cases are left over from ones that have turned into moths. Deal with it now or you’ll have an infestation!

Spoken from bitter experience… I frequently have nightmares about moths and check all of my woollens regularly now.

Those little rice-looking things are what we saw when we had carpet moths.

Did you have a blue jumper?

I think the blue granules are where they’ve eaten something blue

We're replacing all our carpets with hard floors as they're totally destroyed. They're everywhere. The kids now jump up and play squash-the-moth while watching TV. It really gets us down but nothing we do gets rid of them. I suspect they're living off the dust and animal hair under the floorboards and we'll never get rid of them. Horrible things.

UPDATE

I checked the other wicker basket in the same room, and that has the eggs too. Also blue. That basket has sun hats in, with a variety of colours.

I'm not worried. We had a moth infestation years ago in a previous home, which I managed to get rid of with a huge amount of work. Because of being scared by that, I'm always on the look out for months. I don't think I've ever seen the little beige ones in the three years we've lived in this house. I have occasionally seen what I think are the brown house moths. But this is not often. So if we had a full on infestation, I'd have noticed. On the plus side, the room with the carpets is tiled, which makes it harder for them to take hold.