The termites, that is, I hope.  Tomorrow the exterminator is coming back out again to hopefully drill into the slab of the house to start getting rid of those creepy crawlies. After I cleaned out the closet in my husband’s office I pulled up the carpet to track the trails, which go all the way to the wall adjoining the hall bathroom.  What I saw gave me the heebie-jeebies for sure.  Yuck.  I still get goosebumps thinking about it.  *shudder*

Anyway, I’ll probably be donning my headphones tomorrow as I’ll be working from home, too.  My poor cats are going to going to be slinking around the house looking for a good hiding spot.  I may be nice and open up the Kiddo’s room so they can hide under her bed, I haven’t decided yet.

Let’s cross our fingers that they don’t have to open up any walls.

More buggy talk coming up…

I called the exterminating company that did our Termidor treatment four years ago, and the earliest appointment they have is tomorrow between 12n-2p… and that is just to do an inspection, it’s unlikely they would do any treatment the same day.

In the meantime, the dirt tunnels the termites are leaving have doubled in size over night – last night they were about two to two and a half inches long… now they are about four inches long.

My husband thinks we should just vacuum up the tunnels that are there so that they have to start over.  It kind of squicks me out at the idea of vacuuming up live bugs that will be hanging out in the bag of my vacuum… but I guess without any source of water they’ll probably – hopefully – die before being able to chew through the cloth bag to try to get out.  Or suffocate, but then again, they ARE dirt dwellers.  Maybe I’ll go google it and see what I can find…

Recently we got a good amount of rain, over Thanksgiving.  I guess it hasn’t rained here on Thanksgiving in like 12 years, but anyway… Rain usually brings out the bugs, particularly those that lay dormant and hiding for a while.  And more specifically…. termites.

Four years ago we had our house treated with Termidor, and got the treatment that is supposed to be guaranteed for five years.  By my math, we should have at least one more year before we should be seeing any signs of any termites.  But no.  With this most recent rain, they decided it was time to crawl out of the ground and start feasting on our 2x4s.

When this happened four years ago, they popped up only on the outer walls of the house (inside the house, but the walls that share the exterior of the house).  Supposedly, rather than coming up from the ground, it was surmised that they got in through the roof.

This time, they are on an interior wall.  A wall that does NOT share an exterior side with the outside elements. What the heck??  And the buggers are eating quickly, too.  The first patch we have spotted seemed to have popped up overnight.  There’s no telling how big that tunnel is going to be by morning!  My guess is they got in the same way as before – through the roof, since we’re on a cement slab and the exterior walls also happen to be made of cinder block.

Stupid bugs.  They give me the heebie jeebies and my skin crawls just thinking about them.  I know they won’t hurt US, but they still give me the willies.

I guess I get to call the exterminator tomorrow and have them come out and do an inspection.  On the bright side – at least there is still a year left on our guarantee so that hopefully this re-treat is not going to cost us anything!  Or at least not as much as it would if it were not under warranty!

That is what happened last time… we had a re-treat, which was only warrantied for a couple of years, and then a couple weeks after its expiration, the damn bugs showed up again.  I’m glad that was not the case this time – treating for termites is not exactly cheap.  We paid over $800 for the last treatment with Termidor, so they darn well better do a re-treat for practically nothing, if not free!