QUESTION: If you have a closed freezer and let's says you were out on vacation for 3 days and the power went off through out those 3 days. Then, when you come back from your vacation you open your (CLOSED) freezer and there are Maggots formed in the meat!! How are they formed? Is it from a bacteria in the meat?... from Xasha, a student in Puerto Rico.
This is an easy one. Maggots are the larval forms of flies, and these larvae hatch from eggs laid by the flies. The eggs laid by flies (including fruit flies and house flies) are so small that they usually cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Maggots do NOT arise from bacteria or any other contamination in meat.
What this means is that at some point flies had enough contact with the surface of the meat to lay a few eggs on it. It wouldn't have taken more than a few seconds to lay dozens of eggs. The eggs would not have been visible unless the meat was examined by an expert using a high power magnifying glass.
The development of the eggs into larvae (maggots) would be slowed down by refrigerating the meat and stopped altogether by freezing. But they would not be killed.
When the power to the freezer went off, the meat warmed and the development of the eggs resumed. You opened the door and presto, there they were, in all their maggoty glory!
And gross! So, if one could somehow keep one's meat completely fly/larvae-free (which is unlikely since it's in a lot of hands before ours - ewww gross) there would be no maggots. I had wondered that, too.
How come I had maggots in my back fridge, but not my kitchen fridge? I think I can answer my own question. The back fridge had some deer meat that someone had given KOMAR. I bet that had plenty of opportunity of fly dive bombing.
...weevils developing in flour? Where do they come from?
Reminds me of one of my dad's stories from years ago. He and his fellow electricians were having breakfast at a truck stop before going on the jobsite and one of them suddenly stopped eating, exclaiming (completely seriously), "Hey, dere's WEASELS in dese grits!"
"People ask me, 'Why do bad things happen to good people?' and I say 'I don't know,'" Father Maestri said. "But I have a better question. What do good people do when bad things happen to them? Good people get generous, get heroic, respond to the finer angels within themselves."
"People ask me, 'Why do bad things happen to good people?' and I say 'I don't know,'" Father Maestri said. "But I have a better question. What do good people do when bad things happen to them? Good people get generous, get heroic, respond to the finer angels within themselves."
we've all been eating those premaggots and preweevils because we couldn't see them. Let us be reassured by the fact that cooking probably kills them. Of course we don't cook everything...
Ever leave a beer out for a day or 2? (Hey, I have not done that since I had my first apartment -ok?) These little gnats appear from nowhere. Were they in the beer?
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I like kids. They taste like chicken.
but I still get those little bugs! I thought they were fruit flies (drosophila...probably karma for the genetics experiments we did on those guys). In fact, they have been particularly numerous over the past day or so, I can't figure it out.
Fruit flies galore. We get them in waves. They'll be a lull for a while and then all of a sudden there they are again. They're particularly fond of our draft beer tap and I don't blame them.
or the more evolved fly paper rolls in handy decorative dispensers. It's amazing how many of those buggers get stuck to that stuff but it's not nearly as disgusting as the aforementioned maggots.
We've also had some luck spraying fruit flies with Formula 409. My humble opinion is that Formula 409 and WD 40 can cure all evils. In fact, just yesterday I washed the Jetsonmobile and had great difficulty trying to remove pecan tree gunk. Low and behold, WD 40 came to the rescue. Not only did it remove the offending matter but I was practically blinded this morning when I approached my vehicle -- what a shine!
Gus' (Michael Constantine) remedy for just about anything in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". I have actually used windex to knock mosquitoes out of the air and then whack them into oblivion with the TV Guide!
but I do like it. What I wouldn't want to live without is raw oysters which would seem free of fly larva because they leave their beds while "sealed" and aren't exposed until they're opened. But I suppose the act of cranking them open and cutting the "eye" transmits those buggers on the shells to the beautiful fresh oyster.
Oh well, life is hard.
BTW, before we get grossed out by what we eat we might consider the multitude of varmints that grow on our own clean healthy bodies. An aside...did you know that something like 90% of common household dust is cast off human flesh?
I remember seeing info about spontaneous generation years ago (I think it was on that wonderful PBS program "Connections") and knew that this wasn't the case when dealing with maggoty refrigerators. What I couldn't remember (CRAFT) was why this was happening in our storm worn fridges so this wasn't so much a "learn something new every day" as it was an "Oh, yeah, I yoosta know that" situation (and there are so many of those situations so often now that I still blame "the terrorists" -- I'm convinced that they are pumping toxins into the air we breathe...I'd rather believe that than admit that I'm losing my mind due to age).
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