We're being invaded by clover mites.

A clover mite, for the uninitiated, is a tiny, very small mite. They eat clover, sap, ornamental plants, shrubbery, lead, smaller mites, and lasagna. You might think that a clover mite is an insect, but you would be wrong. They're actually mammals, in spite of their tiny size, although under a microscope they look like a relative of the spider or the tick. Clover mites are easily identified by their unusually long forelegs. That is, easily if you have microscopic vision, the super ability to shrink yourself, or you have a microscope handy.

Our first Clover Mite Invasion occurred last year. It happened something like this. Cassie was by the back door and said, "Dad, there's ten billion bugs on the wall." I scoffed, sort of a "HEH!" sound, because she's often exaggerating things like that especially when it comes to bugs. If I've heard "Dad there's a spider in my room the size of a cabbage!" once I've heard it a thousand times. (Don't worry; only once was there a spider in her room the size of a cabbage, and I was able to beat it to death with a lamp, but not before screaming like a girl.) However, when I went to look at the back door there was, in fact, ten billion bugs crawling on the wall. They were reddish-brown and the size of a period in an 8 pt line of type. I was tremendously put out. Here I was in a new house and I already had a huge infestation of some kind. I spent thirty minutes online trying to find out what it was with no luck. So then I actually captured one ( I set out some lasagna and just waited,) put it on a slide complete with cover slip, and looked at it under the microscope. I have a microscope exactly for this sort of emergency. And being the educational Dad that I am, I made my daughter look until she feigned interest.

I returned to the Internet, now armed with an idea of what the beast actually looked like. And then I found the Clover Mite. They come out in the Spring, usually invading by way of a door or window they've jimmied open. Their sole purpose is to crawl around on your walls and entice you to smash them, at which point they have the audacity to burst into a tiny red mark that stains the molecules of whatever they're on, making it impossible to clean apart from using some sort of nuclear weapon. (I've tried SOS® Pads but they just take off the paint.)

So what do the experts recommend? The primary strategy, which I'm employing this year for the first time, is to ignore them. Right now it's working out for me, although I just glanced over at the window in my study and they're crawling around in a synchronized fashion and have spelled out "SMISH US." Apparently clover mites aren't great spellers. If ignoring them doesn't work, or they get rowdy and start playing their music loudly, you can use a vacuum to suck them up. This leaves no marks and removes the clover mites, although you have to wonder what they're doing inside there after you suck them up.

Other strategies involve placing tape near the entry points of your house. This is particularly amusing if you have a cat; nothing is quite as entertaining as a cat with tape on its paw. (I would NEVER do this, of course.) If you're the kind of person who wants to keep them from coming in the house to begin with, all you have to do it get rid of your lawn. Clover mites are not known to live in/near/under concrete.

You can find info on Clover Mites here. I have to run, I just heard the refrigerator open, and I wanted to have that lasagna for lunch tomorrow.