Brought home scrap, and the cloth eating moth
Okay, this is embarrassing to admit. I know, it's a danger with scrapping from the curb: The critters that live in the homes you scrap from can go straight to your home. Well, I brought home the cloth eating moth - yes they really eat any cloth in the home. I would highly recommend that the scrapper knows what the moth, the larvae, the cocoon, and the egg look like, because I did not. The eggs might even be too small to see, I've never seen one, but I think it's a mass of eggs so probably easy to find if you do look. Here is a good idea of thier life cycle:
http://www.catalinarug.com/wp-conten..._Lifecycle.jpg
And here is what the adult looks like in color:
http://vonsomogyi.com.dedi1719.your-...cloth-moth.jpg
Now, luckily, these moths did not get into the house. I store my scrap, temporarily, in the garage before it goes outside to my holding bins (Yep - bad idea - I already know). I remember seeing the larvae on something electronic I was scrapping a while back - I thought I killed them all - and didn't know what they were. Right next to my scrap is a bag of bird food. Okay, never store bird food in Florida - or any state - in your garage. Use the whole bag of bird food, or toss it away. After days of cleaning and vacuuming up moths I found that to be the obvious epicenter. In the bird food was were eggs and larvae developed. The larvae would then crawl directly up the garage wall to my cold weather plant cloths. (We live in an area of Florida that can freeze, so to protect outdoor plants that cannot freeze it's common to have a stash of these around). From the cloths the moths cocooned, and transformed into adulthood. Since discovering this, the bird seed and the plant cloths are obviously gone - bye Felecia! I know there are a million things I could have done differently, such as not temporarily storing scrap inside my garage, and I admit to that, but it was a mistake I made so I stand by it.
Well, it is with this post that I also have to tell you all that my wife is not too happy with my endeavors currently, and I'd have to agree with her. It looks like I have to stop scrapping. I might be able to talk her into letting me collect copper power cords, but we'll see. I for sure do not want to put our house in danger in any way, but I like scrapping. It's free money, tax free money at that, I like the hunt and the trill of the find, but I just cannot live like others in my community do. The positive side to this is I am now an expert on the cloth moth, and getting rid of them, I got to have fun scrapping and learned a great deal about different types of metals!!! I'll still be on the forum, because I am now the guy who would scrap if he could! Can't wait to hear what you all find!
Top 5 Things I Found While Scrapping:
1.) ADT yard sign -- Who throws that out???? LOL, we now "have" ADT services, too - That might be priceless sitting out front.
2.) Beer keg ($40 trade in value at a local liquor store)
3.) An entire curb side of a scrap metal collector's hoard: many nonworking power drills and tools, boxes and boxes of cords and wire, etc
4.) A tankless hotwater system with around 10-12' of #1 copper plumbing
5.) All of my gold from e-waste. I just think that is cool.
PS - I was listening to NPR, they've done lots of stories about how people don't know how to properly recycle. I went collecting on two recycle days - I am not talking about picking through someones recycle bin - I am talking about picking up a bunch of aluminum sliding glass door frames that the person thought was recyclable layin' by the curb, lol. It might be recyclable, but not in the trash pick up truck! You guys might want to check out recycling day. I always found at least 1 big find, usually aluminum, within 200 houses or so, with no scrappers out looking.
