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- You didn’t expect these creatures to drop by, yet here they are, disgustingly, brashly wriggling around your stylish house. Maggots.
- If you’ve found maggots in your house, know that they not only look awful but can also be a health hazard. Whether you go for boiling water, toxic chemicals, or lime or lemon juice, it’s crucial to get rid of maggots as soon as you can.
- This article tackles how to get rid of a maggot infestation in your house.
What are maggots?
Maggots are conically shaped, gray, or creamy baby flies or the larval stage of a fly.
Most maggots in or around the house come from the common housefly or bluebottle fly.
Maggots are burrowers—they use their pointed end to dig in.
Maggots need to eat continuously, so a female fly lays eggs directly in the food. Eggs hatch within 24 hours, and maggots emerge. Larvae feed on spoiled food, old food, pet food, or an animal’s decomposing body for approximately five days. Then, they find dry, dark locations for pupal development. After 15-30 days, maggots turn into adult flies.
House fly larvae, or maggots, look similar to pale worms. Their only purpose is to eat and store energy for their upcoming pupation.
Maggots feed on either live or rotting materials.
They burrow through the material as they eat, leaving circular, chewed holes scattered around. Maggots eat it all:
- waste,
- overripe fruit and vegetables,
- meat,
- fermented substances,
- rotting flesh from decaying animal carcass,
- plants;
Maggots can consume the dead tissue of living human beings in the case of an infestation.
Are maggots dangerous to people’s health? Unfortunately, yes. They carry plenty of bacteria that may cause transmittable diseases and bacterial poisoning; some can be fatal
Important: A severe illness caused by maggots is cutaneous myiasis, a skin infestation by the larvae of certain fly species. Myiasis involves the larvae, i.e., maggots of two-winged flies dipterous flies (read about this disease in MSD Manual). Myiasis of body cavities results from maggot infestation in the nasal passages, eye, ear canal, or mouth, typically caused by D. hominis and the screwworms. If the maggots penetrate the base of the brain, it can cause meningitis and death.
One blessing in maggot infestation is that they’re easy to spot. Almost all the maggots are at least thumbnail-sized, crawling in and out of infested food substances in full sun (unlike mice, for example).
Tip: To investigate maggots presence inside your garbage, use a stick to move the trash around and break food open. Remember to put on gloves!
You may also want to check your pets and plants for the maggot infestation.
How to do it?
Control your pet’s wounds or under the skin. Feel out the area for a hard bump under the flesh of the wound. If your plants that were once healthy are suddenly dying with no other reasonable cause, this may also indicate a maggot infestation. Pull up the plant that features dead tissue and check for maggots in the root mass and the plant’s hole.
Get rid of maggots
They typically appear inside the households when we leave out old or rotting food in the bin for a long time.
Let’s see how to prevent maggots before we successfully handle them (yes, they’ll never want to come back after you put our sneaky tactics in practice).
Prevent maggots
The main things to do to ensure maggots steer clear from your house are:
- removing over-ripe or rotting food quickly, and
- making sure you always keep your dustbin lined and clean;
Tip: Improperly stored trash is one of the most common reasons for maggots thriving. So keep your garbage cans neat if you don’t want maggots to wriggle around your household.
So, you know that a sealed trash bin and a neat trash can are the way to go.
What are the other options?
Get rid of pet feces around your yard and cover dog food—they may attract maggots who consider it a food source.
Besides maggots themselves, you want to eliminate flies as they lay eggs that then turn into larvae.
To discourage flies from coming over, ensure every garbage bag is airtight and tight, each trash can is closed, and there’s no food lying free and uncovered in the house.
Remove all things and food waste attracting flies and where flies lay eggs.
Also, take garbage bags out as soon as they are full.
You can also prevent flies from laying eggs in your food by ensuring pest control of these flying insects. Trust us, after you meet this creepy crawlies in your house once, one gaze will be enough to kill every fly you come across.
Read “How To Get Rid Of House Flies With White Vinegar“.
Pick up every piece of dropped food, tidy up dog feces from the yard, make sure there are no dead animals around, and keep your house clean.
Kill maggots
Maggot infestations can become a severe problem, so find all infested areas in your house if you notice maggot eggs or maggots and take action fast!
Search through food products and investigate all potentially dirty areas of the home.
If there is any part of your home’s foundation that’s rotting, look for maggots there.
Now, it’s time to kill maggots and eggs.
You can boil the maggots found in food or the trash. Boiling water is an unexpectedly effective solution to kill maggots. Just pour boiling water on maggots and maggot eggs directly.
Some natural methods are vinegar, diatomaceous earth, lime, or lemon juice.
These products will cause maggots to shrivel up.
Sprinkle some of those on maggots or around their usual place and leave it to work its magic.
Come back a few hours later to scoop away the debris.
Maggots live, thrive, and reproduce in humid environments, so if you dowse this creepy crawlies with a large amount of table salt, you will dry them out.
If this doesn’t work, you can always sprinkle maggots with an insecticide.
To handle dead maggots, sweep them into a plastic bag and dispose of them.
When you’re done, rinse or wash the area or garbage can out containing the maggots and use a fly repellent to discourage future infestations.
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