CASEWORM MOTH
Have you looked out in your yard and spotted crusty little do-dads, hanging on your screens, and sometimes even hanging on your walls? Nasty! What are they, and where did they come from?
The other evening, my neighbor and friend Debbie, was sitting outside with us, enjoying some libations. She pulled something off our wall (I thought it was a chunk of dirt I hadn’t taken time to clean up), and then she put it on a piece of paper on the table.
“What is that?” I asked. “Watch,” she said. Out of one end of the chunk of dirt came a little brown, wormy head. Wow. I asked her again – “what is that?” Debbie answered that she thought it was a “caseworm.” And, maybe, it ate little pieces of stucco on the side of our building.
I had seen these little things hanging on walls and screens, but did really think about what they really were. So, later, I did what most of us do. I asked Google about them.
Up came a whole article in Featured Creatures, posted by the University of Florida. This creature is actually called the household casebearer, or Phereoeca uterella. It is a small moth. Females lay their eggs on crevices on walls, cementing them on debris, after which they die. Hatching larva construct their own cases, which they carry as protection, and allow them to feed. The fully developed larva is about 7 mm long, with three pairs of legs that it uses to propel the case around. The case is sealed at each end and attached again to walls for the pupal stage. Moths emerge after about 11 to 23 days. The cycle of time that eggs are produced, lava hatch, become pupa, and pupa become moths is about 62 to 86 days.
You may ask, what do these creatures eat? The most common food for household casebearers in Florida is old spider webs. So no, they are not eating your walls. They are cleaning them!
