By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Columnist

What in the world are those things inching along the floor, hanging on the wall, hiding behind the cat's dish?

Definitely animal rather than mineral or vegetable; pod-like and mottled gray; and if you look closely, there's a tiny worm inside. Ugh, but don't look closely.

The mystery of the pod creatures was deftly solved by entomologist Bernarr Kumashiro of the State Department of Agriculture, who recognized the layman's description ("Uh, it's this weird pod thingy that moves") immediately and gave it a name.

"Sounds like what you have there is what they call a case-bearing moth. What you see is actually the larvae with the casing."

Lovely.

Getting quickly to the important stuff, Kumashiro says case-bearing moths — whether they're bearing their case or not — don't bite or sting, won't eat your clothes, your house or your cat, and won't make you sick.

"I suppose they're unsightly," he says. "But they don't cause any kind of damage or anything."

So what do they do?

They eat fungus. They cruise around, case in tow, looking for fungus to eat. Whatta life. About a 74-day life.

There are resources online where you can read way more details about this bug's life than you might ever care to know — kind of "E True Hollywood Stories" or "Behind the Music" for insects, with all the gory details.

"Featured Creatures" from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciencesi department of entomology and nematology has this description:

"It can be found under spiderwebs, in bathrooms, bedrooms and garages. Cases can be found on wool rugs and wool carpets, hanging on curtains or underneath under buildings, hanging from subflooring, joists, sills and foundations; on the exterior of buildings in shaded places, under farm sheds, under lawn furniture, on stored farm machinery and on tree trunks.

"The larval case is a slender flat fusiform or spindle-shape case which resembles a cantaloupe or pumpkin seed. It is silk-lined inside and open at both ends.

"After the first case is completed, the larva starts moving around, pulling its case behind. With each molt, the larva enlarges its case. ..."

Wow, what a flashback to Mr. Kinoshita's 10th-grade biology lectures.

For a minute there, Bernarr Kumashiro was sounding a little like Mr. Kinoshita, too:

"What you can do, because they don't bite or anything, is you can kind of squeeze them and you see the worm popping out. But don't squish it too hard because you'll kill it. But you just kind of gently squeeze it, then you'll see the head popping out."

AAAAAAAH!

(Gee, at least Mr. Kinoshita gave extra credit for such gory experiments!)

Kumashiro isn't sure if there's been a spike in the case-bearing moth population lately. He's had a couple of inquiries about them last week — a couple meaning exactly two, one from me and one from someone in his office.

"I'm not sure why they might be starting to build up like that," he said. "It could be just because we had some wet weather, so the population built up because there was more fungus for them to eat."

Great, so now there's pods AND fungus to think about.

If you've got case-bearing moths bearing their cases around your home, and you'd rather they leave your fungus alone, the best offense is a vacuum cleaner. Suck 'em up. Or, since they can't outrun you, you can always pick them up by hand — if you can bear it. Ugh.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com