Pest Control

The building was old and decaying but somehow it still held up despite the obvious need of repair throughout the structure. The roof was caving in at places, yawning holes leading to open space at others. The paint was chipped and one could barely make out the airy blue that used to glow a soft fluorescence in better years. It was a project to be sure. A project doomed to failure.

The repairman arrived while I was out surveying the rest of the destruction. I couldn’t see what it was he arrived in but I had heard its approach from miles away.

He was an old man. I knew he had long since retired and only did these jobs on the side. The man who referred me to him spoke well of him though. He had said that if he couldn’t fix it then it was unfixable.

I watched him as he walked toward me, eyes on the house surveying the damage.

“Looks like you got yourself a problem,” he said.

I smiled. “Fixable?” I asked.

“You never can tell. Sometimes things that look bad have firm foundations and things that look good are beyond hope. You just never know until you get right down into it.”

He walked over to the wooden entryway and began pulling at the boards which were loose and barely held together by nails and sheetrock. A fairly large section fell to the ground at his touch.

I walked over to see what he was looking at. The board was rotted on the inside and some of it so soft that it was obviously some ways into the process of becoming paper.

“Termites?” I asked.

“My god, from the looks of this you must have a nest of them.”

In my head I began counting up the potential cost of replacing the entire exterior. It was not a pretty thought.

“See this,” he said, pointing to what appeared to be some sort of tunneling.

I nodded, following his finger as he traced it along the edges of the board.

“These little critters make highways of sorts, like this one. They tear up the interior of a house in the time it takes to build the damn thing, usually even faster.”

“How long you think?”

“How long was the infestation? No telling. How old is the house?”

“I have no idea. The contract was so wrinkled it was impossible to make out.” “So are they still in the house?” I asked.

“No, they can’t live in this environment. They have to go back underground regularly – for the moisture. They get it from the earth. Your house is just their food.”

I scratched my head. I always thought the termites lived in the walls.

“When you see them,” he continued, “it is only the occasional scavengers or a small group foraging for more wood to eat. If you see more then it is a swarm. Those happen but it is rare that you actually see one take place.”

He pulled away more of the wooden framework. Hundred of them scurried back into the darkness while a few fell to the ground and just as quickly disappeared into the grass.

“Interesting critters. They live in colonies, like bees, wasps, and many other insects. They are intelligent - to a degree, but they are also so voracious that they destroy their own environment and eventually themselves.”

“Doesn’t sound very smart.”

“Smart? No, not really. But they are cunning little devils.” He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. I watched as he flicked the ashes into a nearby bush.

“So how do we get rid of them?”

“Well hard to say. But before you go off thinking they are all bad, you have to understand they are not. They call it an eco-system. Even these things,” he picked up one and crushed it between his fingers, “are important. The answer isn’t to kill all of them but to get them back to manageable levels and see to it they leave your dwelling place alone.”

He picked at the board, examining it for something it appeared.

“So do you have an idea of what can be done?” I finally asked.

“Well you got to kill ‘em. No two ways about that. The question is how.”


I waited.

“Fi

(This character limit is irritating board mods!)

“First we find out where they live, determine their population roughly, find out how they are getting to the house. Once we know that we just start eradicating them.”

“Poison?”

He nodded, squinting up at the sun, which had emerged from behind a group of clouds.

“Or we could just eat ‘em. They do that in Africa.”

He carefully grabbed one that was scurrying back into the walls, and popped it into his mouth.

“Not bad,” he said. “Lots or protein too.”

“I think I prefer the poison.”

“Then you better get a lot of it.”

“So when do we start?”

“The sooner the better.”

“How about tomorrow morning?” I asked.

“I can be here.”

“So what else do we need to do?”

“Well, let me finish surveying and then I can figure out what we need. It’ll take me an hour or two at most.”

“What about me? Do I need to do anything between now and then?”

“Nope. Just show up and get ready to do some work.”

I told him that I would be ready. We then made small talk as I watched a few of the termites wind their way through the rotted wood and thought about how ominous the word extermination sounded and how some part of me wished that they could communicate and we could somehow come to an agreement of sorts.

I knew this could never be though. The only thing they would understand is death. Death was not always bad, I reasoned. An ecosystem depended on balance. When that balance was disrupted then something had to be done or the entire system would collapse.

I watched as one winded its way back to the bush and then disappeared somewhere near its roots oblivious to the fate that had befallen it.

I felt no remorse.