The Invasion!

I've been invaded by that dreaded colony of wood eating vermins, Termites! Yes, I have termites trying to eat the house down. I've heard of people with termite problems and never for one minute did I suspect that it would happen to me.

I woke up yesterday and was about to start my usual household chores with wifey like we always to on a Saturday. I head into the tiny little storeroom under the stairs to grab a pair of slippers and my grass trimmer. As I'm heading to the back of the house with the slippers, I see some small white things moving under the slipper.

Being the cowardly creature that I am of all creepy crawly like things, I throw the slippers out the back door and scream for wifey. She comes running thinking I'd fallen down or something and I tell her there's creepy crawlies on the slippers. She looks at it and says,

'Houston, we have a problem. Those are termites, Honey!'

Termites? I thought termites only ate wood and not rubber slippers. So we both head back to the storeroom and discover a nice long mud tunnel a long the side of the wall. Tracing that tunnel, it leads to the carom board and without even turning it around, I knew it was a screwed. My fears were proven right cos the back of the board was being eaten away by those wood chompers!

Darn, there goes one nice hardly used carom board! That wasn't all the damage they did. We have a few boxes on the floor which I placed over a thin piece of fibre board and upon lifting the boxes, the ones on the bottom especially, showed signs of termites eating through it. But the worse thing was, half the fibre board (which was roughly 3 feet by 2 feet) was completely eaten away!

I didn't want to even look under the balance of that fibre board and no way was I going to touch it. I do the next best and manly thing. I scream for wifey to lift that board ... LOL! She's the brave one in the family when it comes to creepy crawly stuff. When she lifts the board, we see hundreds if not thousands of termites happily having a feast there.

I grab the insect repellent and spray the crap out of them, which does a magnificent job of killing them. Then we had to go through all the boxes and discovered half of them had to be disposed of and loads of stuff that contained wood such as books and Christmas decorations were all ruined! And yeah buddy, that Christmas wreath you gave me bought it too :(

After isolating all the ruined stuff and throwing everything as far away from the house as I could, I got down to destroying those tunnels they use to get around, scraping every last bit of it off and trailing it back to the source which I discovered is in this corner way back in the storeroom where it was dark and moist, just right for them to thrive. I suppose the main nest is somewhere underground or even in the neighbors house or something.

Those critters managed to find a nice tiny hole through the concrete and decided to invade my place and have been there for god knows how long. I would say I'm a little lucky cos the boxes and some wooden stuff were there for them to feast on before they could attack the storeroom door frames, otherwise the damage would have been worse. They had ample supply of wood based food for them to thrive on in those boxes.

After clearing up the place, I went online and did a thorough research on termites and I'm going to try to starve them for now and see if they go away. I've taken away all their source of food supplies and the storeroom is made of concrete which they can't eat. They did try to rebuild their mud tunnel highway last night cos this morning I saw a new small trail of tunnels making its way back to where the boxes were before.

They work on the same principle of ants following their food trail even though you've taken away the source of their food. I destroyed their tunnel highway again and place some termite repellent at the source of the tiny hole in the concrete to see if they'll try building their mud path again. And if they don't, then I'm going to seal that hole though I don't know how I'm gonna fit myself in there cos the place is so tight!

I know I should call the exterminators for a more thorough and professional job but the thing is the house I'm currently staying in is a rented one seeing as how the construction of the condo I bought a few years back is currently stalled. And until that project gets back on track I'm going to have to be renting this place.

I'm going to call the landlord tomorrow and let him know. I'm definitely not going to bear the cost to call the exterminators cos it's not my house and besides it's in the tenancy agreement for him to take care of the problem.

The good thing is, it's isolated in the storeroom which I've now completely cleared out and have changed the environment in there so that it's not desirable for then to want to stay. I'll be keeping and eye on that room to see if they do indeed try to build their mud path again. I hope not though otherwise I'm probably going to have to look for some wholesale lots to live in . Maybe they would make my day and head over to my neanderthal neighbors house instead! LOL!

But one thing those darn termites succeeded in doing was to ruin my entire Saturday morning! I even had nightmares about them all night.
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