If you have a couple of books that you haven’t read for a long time, there’s a high chance that bugs will damage them.
Today I will tell you all about insects and how to protect your books from them.
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Do insects live in your books?
Bugs love dark, damp places, so if your books are in dark, damp places, bugs will make your books their new home.
Living in the bindings of the pages, they feed on the paper in the fabric of your books for the protein they have to offer. thus destroying its pages with feces and causing the edges of its pages to wrinkle.
why insects attack your books
Although they are like bugs that consume the protein in your books for protein, they do leave their feces on your pages, destroying the book’s materials.
Also, insects see books as another form of food, and even though you’ve worked so hard to collect your precious books, cockroaches love to eat the covers of cloth books and leave the edges rough.
what bugs can do to your books
Once you start noticing an infestation, you’ll want to isolate all of your affected books. sometimes, you can get rid of the insides, destroy them, put them in a zip-lock plastic bag and put them in the freezer, thus killing the insects.
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If you tend to have a library in your home, you will need to make the area free from air humidity and free from dust. doing all this will prevent the attack of the “bugs”.
what kind of insects are in your books?
silverfish
The “silver fish” has been roaming around for more than 400 million years. long time right!
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silvery fish haven’t evolved much since their dinosaur years. only in their size they may have changed a little. silverfish enjoy dining on the glue and paper in your book.
Their place of relaxation is usually in dark corners, the only time they appear is at night. the body of a silverfish resembles a “carrot”. the slender, pointed body of the silverfish and a round head that reaches down to the abdomen area.
silverfish serve no beneficial purpose and are not harmful to humans. so don’t worry about getting rid of them. they love dark, damp places that people don’t intend to go, like your attic, garage, or even your basement. if you happen to come across a silverfish, simply vacuum it up and that will remove it.
cockroach
The cockroach tends to leave a brown liquid on the pages of your books when they haven’t chewed through the paper bindings, as they have flat bodies with each wing, creepy and slithery legs that are long.
Cockroaches enjoy eating debris and garbage and spread bacteria like shigella and salmonella wherever they go. wherever cockroaches walk, they leave behind their feces. extremely difficult to get rid of cockroaches, and they are nocturnal, and if you see them during the day, it is quite possible that they have taken over and there is nowhere left to hide.
they tend to multiply much faster and make it harder to get rid of. so how should you get rid of them? Well, did you know that if there ever was a nuclear war, cockroaches would survive?
The reason is that their bodies don’t continually divide like human cells because it would protect them if there ever was a nuclear war. when getting rid of them, you’ll want to get traps before you buy and spray. The reason is that you will be able to look inside the trap to see if it has caught any cockroaches. if not, you can keep moving it until you find its nest.
bookworms
yes, there is a real bookworm that will eat your book. Bookworms crawl through a book by eating the pages and laying their eggs, and are called booklice.
They look nothing like lice. they love to eat glue, pages and even mushrooms. lice tend to stay in the dark in a dusty old corner.
so how should you kill the booklice? you’ll want to reduce the humidity by purchasing a dehumidifier. you’ll want to use vinegar, bleach, or even another chemical to kill book lice. you may want to put a fan in the room or open the windows for ventilation.
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termites
Wood-loving termites are very attracted to your wooden bookshelf once near your books; they will feed on the pages. termites will cause some damage and are generally known as silent destroyers. termites eat a plant-based material (cellulose).
some houses might have it within their walls. Termites come into your home by crossing colonies from yard to colony, then crawling through cracks and crevices and around wires and even pipes, giving them access to the house. you will have to call orkin to get some dry foam which is a bait and will kill them.
how to protect books from insects and how to get rid of them
Once you’ve found the infestation, you’ll need to take your books and isolate them by placing them in resealable plastic bags and putting them in the freezer.
Doing this will kill the bugs. You’ll also want to keep your shelving free from moisture and even dust. doing this will help keep these insects away. doing this not only helps to get rid of book errors.
having water in the air can cause fungus and even mold in temperatures around seventy degrees. you’ll want to get a dehumidifier, and that will help you suck all the moisture out of the room’s air.
Also, if there’s too little humidity to dry out your books, then that’s when humidifiers will help your books. to dry out
Dust is also a magnet for moisture, even mold, so you’ll want to keep the top of your book dusted with the humidifier. you may want to place a fan near your bookshelf; therefore keeping the air ventilated and extreme heat may damage your books. if it’s hot in the room without humidity, then your pages will be so brittle because the fiber in the books has dehydrated.
While you’re getting rid of the mice, you’ll want to get some dog food if you have animals and put them in a sealed container. you’ll want to keep your bulk food in a large metal container.
Try to remove all debris and grass from around your home. be sure to trim your bushes and branches and make sure they don’t touch your house. you’ll want to store wooden food away from your home.
Make sure there is no paper or cardboard lying around inside or outside your home. well, it is generally preferable to catch the mouse than to let it loose far away from your house. using traps does not mean that you always use poison with the traps. some have a metal strap that has a powerful snap.
then if the mouse crawls to eat its leftover snack, make the belt break and kill the mouse/rat. glue traps are made of cardboard with a glued plastic strip that will hold the mouse/rat to the piece of cardboard.
You could also put out bait, in which case it could be horrible because after leaving the bait, the rodent could go through your walls and die, making it hard for you to find it. or live traps catch them and then release them back into the wild, and then they may return home if they’re not carried too far.
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