I've heard it said by some of the more extreme composters, "If it was once alive, you can compost it." Boot leather, genuine rubber, cotton or wool clothing, dairy, horns, clam shells, surplus 4x4 boards, whole deer carcasses, anything. Mostly people avoid heavily processed and tough things like leather and rubber because they take a long time to break down, and meat and dairy type things because they can stink, and they attract decomposers that are not welcome nearby (such as rats and raccoons, which eat and poop just as well as worms do).

I think if you have a long enough time scale to wait, you can thoroughly bury smelly stuff under odor-absorbing carbon-rich material, and you're willing to deal with anything and everything that turns up to help, your composting system can probably evolve to handle anything once-living that you throw at it. A very large, hot (moist, well-ventilated, nitrogen-rich) pile located far away from high traffic areas (home and any frequently used garden paths), and left at least partially intact to culture and shelter a wide variety of decomposers, seems most likely to succeed. The heat might be too much for some of your local decomposers, but huge piles that aren't uniform tend to have hot spots and cool spots, so residents can take refuge wherever in the pile suits them.

I checked pictures and confirmed that they are black soldier fly larvae, which do not necessarily need meat products. In fact, the general consensus is that they like veggie scraps...and well, who doesn't compost with veggie scraps? So I guess that explains why they are always around even if I was careful not to have meaty products.

Well then, what was eating the suet? I've heard that black bears like suet..... Black soldier fly larvae are much more fun to feed than black bears, I guess, although I've never had either in my compost pile.

Claire

Well what I meant was that, even without meat or suet, the BFL would be in the pile anyway. Once other things are added, such as meat or suet products, then the existing BFL would make short work of it. They were already there in the pile.

I understood that, purslanegarden. I was just reacting to your original post of enjoying feeding the critters in the compost pile, and my mind jumped to the thought of feeding black bears. I meant it as a light-hearted comment.

Claire