You may think that this is a political screed comparing Donald Trump to Ron DeSantis. Au contrair, Mon Ami. This is a screed about ~6mm (I have previously mentioned that all the beetles in Austin are Metric) winged beetles of the superfamily Curculionoidea. You may know them as Flour Bugs.
I first became acquainted with them in my childhood when they showed up in Mexican pastries. The baker had baked weevil infested flour into tasty pastries which my father then purchased and brought home. We ate them only to discover the dead beetles in the bread. They caused no illness and added just a bit of roughage and protein to the pastry. Still, the idea of eating bugs was a bit off-putting until I learned to eat crickets, grasshoppers, and other insects as an adult.
The Weevils disappeared from my ken for several decades until our son was a college student. One day, he reported that the flour in his cupboard was full of weevils. His other grains, rice and cereal, may have also been affected. It was a long time ago, and I didn’t make notes.
A few days ago, Susan opened a cardboard box of packaged Bombay Potatoes and Chana Masala that we had purchased through Amazon. There were a few weevils in the cardboard box. Merde! She discarded the cardboard boxes. Later, I found them in an opened roll of Ritz crackers that had been sitting on the same countertop. Give me a break!
Today, while preparing to cook some ramen noodles for our supper, she noticed weevils in the induction-heated pitcher that we use to heat water for instant coffee, tea, and noodles. She washed it out, and then she realized that the entire counter sported these long-snouted metric beetles. Scheisse!
These bugs can get into anything that isn’t hermetically sealed; so, the battle lines have been drawn, and we will have to go through all the loosely closed chips and staples in the pantry. Sacré bleu!