Bug stories (but not mine)

 Catching up with my sisters this past week, while we've been on vacation together, has been a blast.  

My youngest sister told us about her latest adventures with carpet beetles in her home in San Diego.  The irony is that the infestation happened months after they'd removed all carpet from the home.  At first she couldn't tell what these creatures were, or even that they were creatures -- she says they were flea-sized specks of dirt that moved around a bunch. 

Everything she read on line said that you could eradicate them by vacuuming regularly, and so she did, every single day, for weeks and weeks.  And still, the bugs didn't disappear.  The online advice said that you really needed to get rid of the nest, but eventually she realized that the trail of carpet beetles led to a particular crack between the baseboard and the floor; the beetles were in her walls, and who knew how to get at the nest, wherever it might be there?

So, for weeks, daily vacuuming.  

Then came a hard rain, rare in San Diego, of course.  As often happened after a hard rain there, she got ants in the house soon after.  Double pestilence!   Even worse, she eventually noticed that the ants were using the same crack, following the same trail as the beetles.   She figured she'd have to eliminate both.  

But another quick foray online alerted her to the fact that ants and carpet beetles are antagonists.  The ants weren't finding a new home; rather, they had just discovered their new favorite restaurant.  After weeks and weeks of daily vacuuming with no effect, the carpet beetles disappeared entirely within two days of the ants' arrival.  

We've since learned that this approach is called "integrated pest management".  Go, Mama Nature!