Ants

Pull everything off the shelves: all the cookbooks, the bottles of vinegar (balsamic thick and sweet, red wine tangy and thin), oil (truffle, corn, olive, sesame, chili), seltzer (orange and raspberry, flavored by some arcane science) and soy sauce, boxes of salt, Fiestaware serving plates that didn't really fit anyplace else, nested mixing bowls, canvas bags self-righteously toted to the store, multicolored aprons.

Then pull the shelf away from the wall to find where they're coming in, the little buggers - sugar ants, the tiny black ones that wriggle around on the counter, industriously searching out the nuggets and morsels of food we've left in our half-assed cleaning to take back to some writhing nest nearby.

In the process, though, we see what our neglect has wrought, all of the times we missed sweeping back here, or swept things under to make the rest of the floor seem clean.

I dig the broom out of the closet and attack the corners with a will before nuking the site from orbit with nerve gas and a couple of bait traps, just to be sure.