Nic Harding's Blog - on life & leadership

Well it may not be everyone’s idea of a great Christmas, but dealing successfully with a maggot invasion was one of the highlights of ours!

After all the Christmas turkey was gone and the last morsels of Christmas pudding had been fought over, we faced the brutal fact that we were not winning the battle of the maggots. I hasten to add that the maggots had no place in our festivities, but were a constant looming presence throughout. They were like a dark presence that refused to go away, a reminder that all was not quite as it should be in our kitchen.

The problem started about a year ago when we first noticed little white maggots crawling across our ceiling. After days of puzzling over where they came from, we eventually thought we found the source – a Christmas decoration bought from one of the market stalls in town, one made of dried oranges and cinnamon sticks. We thought that the eggs were being hatched in the fruit. Indeed after removing the offending article, it all seemed to stop. But then the little blighters returned later in the year and again in December. Each morning we would get up to find 3 or 4 of the wriggling vermin on our ceiling. They were quickly dispatched of in the most inhumane way possible (I leave it to your imagination). Through the day several more would just appear, as if by magic. We could not figure out where they were coming from. Thankfully they never made their way down to the level of the food!

In desperation I did what any self-respecting head of the house would do – I googled ‘maggots on the ceiling’. Immediately the cause was identified by other sufferers, mainly in the States, as something called the pantry moth. In fact we had also been scooping up a small number of innocuous looking moths as well. The cure had to be radical – removing all opened packets of dried food, from flour and cereals to dried fruit and spices. 3 hours later and about £60 poorer Jen completed the ‘species cleansing’. The culprit looked to be a bag of pecan nuts brought back from the States by one of our lodgers!

So what is to learn? Firstly keep all opened packets in sealed plastic or glass containers. Secondly deal radically with anything that threatens your well-being. It reminded me of the time when, as an 18 year old I decided to get rid of my prized record collection. Why? Because it was a source of emotional addiction, getting me through periods of melancholy and feeling low. Yes it does in retrospect seem to be a bit over the top, but I know for me at the time, it gave me what I most wanted, the motivation to find my joy and contentment in my relationship with God.

What about the maggots? Well it is now about a week later and all is clear so far. Each morning there is a daily check of the kitchen ceiling, and a ‘thank you God’ to follow.

Happy New Year. May it be a year in which you find freedom from all that threatens your well-being