What Are These Tiny Bugs in My Puzzle Box?

Dear Home Ec 101,

I was putting a puzzle together with one of my kids the other day and noticed that some tiny little bugs were moving around while looking for a corner piece.

I didn’t freak out. I want to know what they are and if there is a way I can get rid of them?
Signed,
Slightly Skeeved in Slidell

Heather says

Those tiny bugs you found are insects, but they aren’t bugs. Hooray, it’s time for an unexpected biology lesson, aren’t you stoked? I am.

I have to clarify because some people like to get super picky and write tiresome, long-winded emails if the wrong word is used. Even if the point is just to describe some of the creepy crawlies we run into.

Bugs are a specific order of insects. Think back to Biology, do you remember: Did King Philip Cry Out,  “For Goodness Sakes!”?

The little, hard-to-see, colorless or gray insects you found are commonly known as booklice and belong to the order Psocoptera.

First of all, I want to assure you that while a little on the icky side, psocids like your new friends, the booklice are mostly harmless. They aren’t going to bite you, your kid, or destroy your library. Psocids show up when the humidity is high and dine on the resulting mold.

Please note that I said mostly harmless. There have been severe infestations where they have infested pantries and gotten into grains. This is not common and in these cases, I don’t believe you would be writing about a few tiny things in a puzzle box. You would have them everywhere. There would be subtle movement in every dark, damp corner. In other words, you would have far more problems than minor curiosity about a puzzle.

Most commercially available insecticides won’t work on your barely visible pests, so it’s better to make your environment less hospitable to psocids in general. They may, by the way, have non-traditional families—and I don’t mean of the taxonomic kind. Psocids can reproduce through a process called parthenogenesis, which is a bit different than asexual reproduction. Animals that can reproduce via parthenogenesis have different sexes, but females can reproduce without the presence of a male. I find this fascinating, which is probably just another reason my favorite place is the nerd table.

So, I guess the question is – what to do if you find a few psocids in your books or puzzles?

Option 1: Take off your glasses and pretend you never saw them in the first place.

Option 2: Freak out and hire an exterminator and pay a lot of money to get rid of a mostly harmless cohabitant.

Option 3: Invest in a dehumidifier and make the living conditions less hospitable to your little squatters. The best thing about this option is that it also makes your home less of a haven for the much more bothersome dust mites.

The choice is up to you.

If your tiny bug issues are not booklice this article on tiny bugs in a window may be helpful as would this one on the difference between gnats, fungus flies and drain flies. Am I the only one who finds it obnoxious how many little pests our homes can have?

Send your domestic questions to helpme@home-ec101.com.