Release the hounds!

Yesterday, a delivery guy left a box in front of my door without knocking. It contained

the predator mites

Unpacking insects is an interesting experience, if you have
a/ a vivid imagination and
b/ no experience buying crickets to feed to pets that eat live crickets.

Suffice it to say I was daunted.

I cut the packing tape and opened the lid and found:

shredded paper.

After a few minutes I gingerly lifted the shredded paper and found:

bubble wrap.

After a few minutes I poked at the bubble wrap and unpicked it a little and found:

a pair of ice packs.

Below that:

nothing.

I looked back at the shredded paper on my kitchen counter and poked at that and found:

a medicine bottle full of tiny bean leaves and, presumably - they're pretty small and my sight isn't that fabulous anymore - predator mites.

Deep breath. Quick shift of medicine bottle to the coolest room in the house (they like to be around 50 degrees F if they can get it.) And then after a brief rain in the evening (they like humidity) I talked somebody else into sprinkling some of the contents of the bottle over the shrubs that the red mites have been destroying in my garden.

And now: I wait.

(and eat ice cream.)