It was apparent over the weekend that maggots were in the wheelie bin outside. I tried various things on them courtesy of self-appointed experts on YouTube. Nothing worked. If anything they were multiplying and thriving. I was wondering which tactic to try next or whether I could make it to bin day on Wednesday. But yesterday (Monday) I noticed quite a lot were now on the lid. Then, not long after dark and after rain started, I went into the kitchen and saw numerous things wriggling up the glass parts of the back door. I went around via the front of the house and saw a biblical plague lite. There were hundreds (if not more) maggots all over the bin, along the path and up the kitchen door and adjacent walls. Strange thing is, the kitchen door isn't directly opposite the household waste bin. They were appearing to go directly, diagonally toward the door. Could they detect a faint whiff of the kitchen bin inside? I've long since ceased being amazed by the clever senses of apparently simple organisms. I was panicking a bit. I started throwing boiling water at them. I did this a lot before I realised that was just stunning them briefly and actually making them even keener to climb up the door.
Change of tactic. I now started throwing a bleach and water mix at them and it did seem to kill most of them that got hit or at least put them in a coma. I'm pretty sure they were in their thousands at this point and reckoned I needed to deal with the root of the problem or they'd just keep coming. The root of problem was the food source, the Mt. Doom of round-the-clock maggot factory, the bin. I managed to lift the maggoty, black, bin bag out of the bin and into another bin bag which promptly ripped because cheap supermarket bin bags are very thin. So I then inserted this bundle into a third bag which also ripped. I was getting very fed up. I moved this tied-off but side-ripped bundle up the back lawn away from the house and worried that the maggots in it would come out just as they had escaped the wheelie bin earlier. I opened the blinds at the rear of the house to cast light on the back garden in the hope it would discourage foxes et al. from going at the maggoty, smelly bag. The local tip wouldn't open for another six hours or so. I poured a bit of bleach on the grass around the bag in the random hope it'd stop maggots going walkabout and stop animals touching it. I checked it half an hour later and about ten maggots were on the exterior of the bag. Oh no.
Back at the battleground, most maggots at the side of the house (the back door is actually on the side) were dead but a few were still wriggling and some even still climbing. Yet more fed-upness. But perhaps this battle against evil was turning. About twenty thingies were still crawling on the bin sides and lid so I used more chemical wet bombs and missiles, then I put some water in the bottom of the now empty bin to drown the small bunch still in there. Turning back to the main carnage, I deepened the bleach puddles, especially where I saw any wriggling. I ran out of bleach and went to the twenty-four hour shop to get more. More bleach was splashed about. Some was put in a squirty bottle and sprayed in tactical hits. All this time I was worrying about how to get the stinky bag on the grass to the tip without maggotizing my car. I had an old duvet cover due to be thrown out so I decided I'd use that to transport the vile package to the tip…but I wouldn't bag it yet.
While I waited for the recycling centre to open I started washing and brushing the countless carcasses down the path away from the house and toward the road. This took forever because maggots stick to rough slabs when you brush them. Many tidal waves of water from the mop bucket were needed and incessant sweeping too. I also dragged the wheelie bin up the garden and poured the drowned larvae out. Then, at the last possible minute, I put the vile parcel that still had the maggot factory inside it in the old duvet cover, which I scrunched up and taped around. Thankfully, I only saw one maggot on the outside of the black bag, perhaps because the now cold air had sent them back inside it. Got it disposed of. Returned home. No maggots in the car. There was a slight smell in the car that had faded by the time I got home.
Oh, and yes, some did get in the house. I think I nabbed about twenty or thirty of them in ones and twos that wriggled in under the kitchen door. I was constantly re-checking for them all night. It was much anxiousness and it was terribly exhausting but I got all of them.
Lessons learned:
1) Don't put food waste in the outside bin unless it's bagged. I sort of knew this but risked it.2) Maggots are Orc-like.3) Boiling water doesn't work. If the the bin has been emptied of waste and all the maggots are there then water can drown them but it doesn't need to be boiled. They're brilliant at sprinting up vertically though, so you have to make sure they're splashed right down. Also, water in the bin when the maggots and waste are still present probably encourages evacuation, also known as Armageddon.4) Bleach/water mix kills them but killing every single one permanently is extremely difficult for some reason.5) Get maggots as quickly as possible. I once fettled a minor bin maggot problem with white vinegar, but in that case they were caught very early and the bin was emptied the next morning.6) The council only emptying the bins every two weeks makes me very annoyed. I think it was nearly two weeks ago that I scraped food into the bin.7) Spending about twelve hours all through the night fighting a war of attrition against waves of vermin is exhausting. I was on my (crappy) feet most of that time. My (crappy) back had to lift an extremely obese bin bag and the mop bucket full of water weighed a ton as I carried it many times around the house. By 8:30am I felt more broken than I can remember feeling. I suppose having previous injuries exacerbates.