Ants!

This house has been fairly bug free throughout our occupation. Our previous place on Calle Rio had a bit of an ant infestation. The only thing we've regularly seen here is sun spiders. And the solo mosquito late at night when they buzz in your ear in the dark just so they can see you futilely slap yourself.

But now Raquel and I have noticed ants in our bathroom.  [Josh's is still apparently clear.] First in our medicine cabinet, then around our sink. Little teeny, tiny ants. We were squishing them to discourage them, moving some cosmetic argan oil they seemed attracted to, and spreading aromatic oils to try to repel them. Nothing seemed to be working. [They are tough little things, very difficult to crunch!]

Then one morning I noticed the thrush-like birds resident here circling in the sky, and was reminded of gulls in Sheboygan doing the same during ant hatchings. I watchwd more closely where our bathroom ants were coming from, and observed this:

Hot water faucet handle.

That is rust and a badly corroded screw that was under the top cap of the handle. But all of the specks around, under, and INSIDE the handle are ants! They had nested inside the hollow clear plastic handle.

I tried removing the handle but the screw was too corroded, so resorted to banging on it to knock the ants out. After about half an hour and several follow up sessions I killed most of the ants or flushed them down the drain. The few remaining ones left. Hopefully they haven't taken up residence somewhere more difficult to reach.