Trouble on the Homefront!

Last night about midnight, I noticed a dozen or so weird-looking little bugs in the lavatory.  Hmmm..that is not good!  I turned on the hot water and washed them down the drain.  There!  That was done!  No more bugs!..or so I thought!  Out of curiosity, I pulled back the shower curtain and sure enough..there were more bugs!  Ugh!  Without my glasses I could not really tell just what type these bugs were, so I called Michael who was in the kitchen raiding the frig.  When I asked him what the bug looked like, he immediately said, "Termites!"  Oh, my!  NOOOOOOO! After that moment of distress, we started noticing bugs everywhere.  This was not good at all!  They were not only on the lavatory and tub but on the walls, ceilings and floor (and everything in between!).  Termites..NOOOOOOOO!  The night was beginning to resemble some ad for termite control where a homeowner suddenly realizes that the wood-munching critters were literally eating the house!  But this was MY HOUSE!  No bugs can eat my house!  Needless to say, the more we looked..the more we found.  Even the bedrooms upstairs had critters albeit most were either dying or dead.  I took some consolation in that fact until today.  My sweet sister-in-law, Cynthia, came knocking at my door with a small jar in hand. Uh oh...yep, the bugs had swarmed her house, too.  Well, maybe things were not so bad..she lives quite a distance away from the Bayou..all the way across the Bay!  Perhaps this torrent of termites was not a local thing and they had blown in here to die!  Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose, since I was still finding the critters.

Now I find out the bad part.  There was not some magic shield around our house that was killing the termites on contact.  It seems that when the adults swarm, it is after they lay their eggs.  They will swarm away from the egg-laying site to let the newbies have the area.  The swarmers die off and the eggs hatch to start this wood-gnawing cycle to continue.  My HOUSE!!!  Sweet Cynthia came back to the house with the bad news that these were not the usual termites of this area. She had taken her live critters to the Mississippi State University Coastal Research and Extension Service.  Although they do not usually handle anything like this, they did positively identify the critters as termites and told her that they would refer her to someone who would know all about  the termites.  They, also, told her that she was the fifth person to bring in the bugs today, so at least I know that I am not alone in this war I am waging!  Bugs beware!  The law is on your tail now!  I am again to be armed with termite spray.  Everything wood will be soaked through again just in case some of these critters deposited eggs before they met their death.  Perhaps this will assure that my house will not be on the menu for the next "Feast of the Termite"!

Somewhere in all of this trouble, I have to find a positive point.  The eternal optimist in me always looks for the good in all things..in this though, I am having difficulty.  Other than the fact that the masses of dead/dying insects needing to be vacuumed which caused me to have very clean floors, I cannot think of a single thing that might be considered good.  Maybe...at least they are dead bugs???  Today, I am off to find any infestations of eggs or larvae.  Oh...good point!  I now have an incentive to clear up any old wood piled in the yard!