"Anyhow, during my thorough examinations, I came across this little fucker and handled business before it got outta control"

Those are thrips. I had 'em too HD. I used Concern and it worked perfectly. It's an insecticidal soap. The experts on such things that I spoke with suggested that these little pieces of crap (what I call them) are tough to get rid of as they get in the dirt and that's where they propagate. Turn into flying biting little monsters. They suggested at least 4 applications to make sure that you get them all.