Frank wrote:
....
Having seen termites near the house and knowing that neighbors had
treated for them I decided to get a contract with Terminex and treat my
house for peace of mind. They injected Thermidor around the house and
inspect annually.

Damned if a colony did not establish itself in a wood pile on my
concrete patio about 5 feet from the house. Terminex came out and
sprayed the bottom of the pile but apparently termites were just in a
couple of pieces of rotted wet wood near the top of the pile.

This sounds like a similar situation. Nothing to panic over but
something you should not neglect.

a good ramble jumping off point.

termites, ants, bees, beetles, pillbugs, and of
course many other insects are a part of the whole
system which recycles organic materials. fungi
are another critical part of that cycle.

while you may want to build with organic materials
in areas prone to termites and such, it's usually a
much better choice to use non-organic materials
instead (glass, metal, stone, cement). you may pay
more up front, but you can then avoid the use of
poisons.

here we've got wood exterior with many points of
possible entry into the house. i can seal it up with
caulk, but that is at the cost each year (because the
wood expands/contracts each year) much better could
have been completely avoided using a different material.
*sigh* we don't seem to have termites around much at
all, but ants are another story.

i spent several days this past fall caulking and
sealing up cracks to keep the ants out that were
coming in (black carpenter ants are not to be ignored
when you find them in your house). tracking them down,
finding where they were coming in...

removing all dead wood from around the perimeter of
the house and back about 100ft might keep those types
of ants and termites from coming in, but if your house
itself is wood in any way or even has an inviting crack
in the exterior then you are vulnerable to ants. they
are everywhere, and you can poison them all you want,
but they will be back. they have millions of years of
experience with dealing with the worst that the universe
can throw at them and they are not going away any time
soon.

the black ants that were coming in were actually
coming from a nest over 70ft from the house. we have
a lot of dead wood in various areas (left to rot
intentionally, i'm not clearing it out) and it is
there for good reasons so there will likely be other
attempts to set up shop here in the house, but they
first have to cross quite a distance of crushed
limestone mulch so they aren't finding much organic
materials in there to attract them further (water and
insect remains i can't do much about). sometimes the
black ants were finding a path which included crawling
right over me and my perch here. that's no fun in
the middle of the night...

another time we had ants set up shop in the ceiling
of all places. figured that it must have been a new
queen that landed on the roof and found a crack to get
through and it was good enough for her... took us a
few weeks to get rid of them once we found them
crawling across the floor.

now that we have a better roof (another *grr!* and
*sigh* aimed at my ex-step-dad who used the cheapest
shingles and didn't do it right anyways so deserves a
swift kick in the pants for that too) i'm hoping to
not repeat that experience the rest of the time i'm
living here.

the prime attractants to ants in the house itself
would be the piles of flour, sugar, etc. that Ma keeps
on hand to make stuff with. just a few crumbs found
by a foraging scout and the game is on for the ant
colony that strikes such gold. i'm pretty sure that
if i did not keep a close eye on the perimeter and
sealing up cracks that i can find that we'd be invaded
by them quite a bit more.

i like ants, btw, they're facinating creatures.
E.O. Wilson cowrote a great book on them called
_the Ants_ and much more is being discovered.


songbird