Last week we heard from a concerned reader who came across an “awful lot” of maggots in her bathroom. She said she just did an intense spring cleaning (good for her!) and lives alone, so there isn’t any chance that there was urine on the floor. She doesn’t understand how so many could appear so suddenly when she doesn’t have a fly problem and empties her trash daily.
She didn’t send us a photo, so we will have to trust that these are indeed maggots. Maggots are the larval form of the common housefly. Before they mature into flies, they eat waste and decayed food and flesh. People who find maggots in their home usually haven’t cleaned for a while, or also have a fly problem. Since we know neither of these options is true for our reader, we aren’t sure where these maggots have appeared from.
We don’t know where these maggots are coming from, but we will offer two potential explanations. First, the maggots might be coming from somewhere other than the bathroom, which was just cleaned. They could be munching on something in the living room or kitchen and then be crawling into the bathroom. Our reader should inspect all the food items in her kitchen in case there is some decaying item they are feeding on. Another possible explanation is that there is a dead rodent trapped in the floorboards or walls. We don’t think this is very likely because our reader would probably smell the decaying specimen. Although both of this situations could be a reason for the appearance of the maggots, we don’t know for sure.
Oddly enough, the most efficient way to get rid of maggots is to pour boiling water on them. We recommend our reader do this and then dispose of their carcasses.
To summarize, a reader discovered a bunch of maggots in her bathroom. We speculated about where they might have come from, but we do not know for sure.
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I had a maggot problem in my bathroom just like this. Turns out there was a dead bird in my exhaust fan duct and the maggots were crawling to the fan and falling down to the floor. Gross. I took the fan down and blew out the dead bird and maggots with an air compressor then installed a screen on the outside duct opening. Problem solved.