Yeah I googled them quickly, and found a page that says there's two types of clothes moth in my area: web and case. The case moth is the one I haveone of the things that had me freakin out is that what looked like a cocoon clearly wasn't a cocoon if they were poking their heads out. No metamorphosis was happening, it was just a shell they'd made to live in.
So the page I was reading said that the case moths were interesting because the moths themselves don't eat at all; instead, the females lay eggs in fabric, and the larvae hatch, consume the fabric around them, and create a case out of the fabric fibres.
So the first one I found, its case looked almost scaley. These three, at first I thought their cases were just bits of fluff, like dryer lint, and I went to pick them out of the loose fur when the horrible crawly poked its head out to look at me. Closer inspection showed their cases seemed to be made of fur.
So the issue here is yes, I have a bowl of loose fur the moths apparently thought was a great place to lay eggs... that's gone ASAP, further fur collection will be in a jar... but I also have a lot of other fabrics everywhere that don't necessarily get cleaned regularly the way fabrics should to prevent moths. I have piles of towels everywhere for any occasionI've even got a towel covering a large litter box, to give Lahi a litter that will keep shavings from sticking to Lahi's feet when I've put antiseptic wash on his sore hocks and I'm waiting for them to dry. That towel, predictably, gets pretty nasty sometimes. Let's not forget also that their enclosure is carpeted. The floor is carpet, the condo shelves are carpet, and with me not living with them right now it certainly doesn't get vacuumed on a regular basis!
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And of course being a basement there's junk and stuff stored everywhere. The next room has racks of old clothing. The ancient sectional couch is rotated around and has an equally ancient mattress on it to make a bed, with old sheets and a bunch of leftover blankets.
So when I look up clothes moths and see "make sure all fabric gets cleaned regularly"...
Hahah so what you're saying is I'm screwed???
Anyway yes someone immediately brought up cedar as a preventative and I immediately shot that down, lavender does ring a bell for me though. Thing is to my understanding, cedar/lavender/other scents are intended to be packed into dressers/chests/boxes to prevent moths from getting into stored fabrics. They're generally only used in enclosed spaces.
But perhaps it's just assumed that fabrics not stored are getting cleaned regularly???
The ultimate takeaway here though is that they're not dangerous to rabbits. Perhaps a particularly bold moth might try to lay eggs on a rabbit's fur while it's still attached to them? But they're not parasites, so if the typically fastidious rabbit grooms the eggs out of their fur and ingests them, they're not going to hatch in the digestive system and have a party through the body, and that's what I was afraid of. Tapeworm, roundworm, and other such parasites depend on the host consuming the worm and growing to maturity inside the hosts' body, and so I panicked finding worm-things in areas that the buns might ingest them.
Still bad news for apparently various fabrics and clothes in the house might be literally moth-eaten, but the bunnehs are safe so I could literally care less about my fabrics right now.
