Despite being a largely unsuccessful gaming handheld, there are still millions of PlayStation Vitas out there in the world. Many are gathering dust. Some are waiting to be sold to new buyers who haven’t yet discovered the niche beauty of one of Sony’s wildest hardware experiments of the past decade. And at least one has been completely overrun by a whole damn ant colony.

“Today I found out that my PS Vita turned into an ant colony to store their eggs,” user mutdualeo wrote on a recent Reddit post (thank you Sports Illustrated) which sounded like Gandalf describing drums in the deep during the fall of Moria. “They are crawling from every corner (speaker, charging ports, etc.), which is terrifying. I fear that [they’re] I’m going to bite into some components on the Vita.”

The handheld owner asked other PS Vita fans if they had any “experience repelling ants from electronic devices.” The device had been sitting on a book shelf for a couple of weeks unattended. At one point, mutdualeo began to notice a few ants in the room, and then a few more, before finally deciding to follow them. But they did not leave the house. They were going home to the Vita.

Mutdualeo even included video footage of the hundreds of tiny black specks scurrying across the device’s intricate wires and circuit boards. “Please help me,” they wrote. “Killing it will be my last resort because they still have eggs inside.” we have been here before with playstation 4s and cockroachesbut this was a whole society of insects taking over.

The reactions started pouring in. “This is horrible,” wrote one person. “A true Hellscape,” wrote another. Honest advice quickly followed. “Maybe try some compressed air, take it outside and blow them up,” read one suggestion. “Zip bag and then put in the freezer for a while,” said another. “REMOVE THE BATTERY FIRST!” one commenter urgently clarified.

But mutdualeo did not want to kill the colony, so more research was needed. One commenter, AholeBrock, said this happened to her girlfriend’s Macbook when a bunch of juice was spilled on it. Perhaps the ants would naturally tire of the Vita after a few days? But mutdualeo clarified that there were no spills and pointed to the fact that there were eggs everywhere. AholeBrock replied that if those were eggs, there must be a queen ant in there somewhere.

“Now you mention it, I saw an ant that is bigger than the other one,” wrote mutdualeo. “I think this is the queen ant.” shared a photo. “It seems to be,” answered AholeBrock. “Holy hell. Was this vita still powering up?

Fortunately, a commenter came along who was genuinely into “social bugs and retro gaming”, and tried to help identify the bugs. His opinion on the situation. was next:

These photos aren’t clear enough for you to even try to identify these ants, BUT they are enough to say that you actually got lucky because they are NOT tawny crazy ants, who love electronics and will chew them up. They could have bricked your device! Another thing I can say is that this species, based on the shape and size of its queen, is totally cloistered. What that means is that once the queen mated, she found your device and said yes this is my dream house and lived in it for a few weeks or a few months. Until a year! She just needed water, which she probably got from condensation or just near her device or both. Then, he started building his colony from scratch. She started with a few workers from her initial eggs and then built from there, with those workers bringing her all of her doritos and Domino crumbs to fuel her growing empire. Everything from the one and only queen of ants that crawls through your cracks.

Whether they were actually Rasberry ants, as another commenter suggested, or something else entirely, ultimately didn’t matter. Although Mutdualeo hoped that he could blow on the ants so that they would go away and take their eggs with them, things did not go according to plan. “I followed some of his suggestions by using a hair dryer, but maybe mine was too hot and accidentally killed the ants.” they wrote in an update a day later.

It gets worse. Mutualeo Elaborated. “The ants seem furious after I blow on them, biting and killing their own queen.”

So much for the ant colony. The PS Vita, however, is apparently fine now. Mutdualeo finished taking it apart, cleaning it and putting it back together. “In the end, my PS Vita is still working properly and there is no damage to the device,” they wrote. “Thank you for your support and suggestions to clean up this mess!”

A lesser handheld probably wouldn’t have survived the ordeal. However, Vita fans are used to beating the odds. maybe sony should make a second after all.