One warm afternoon in May I stepped out of the bathroom and into the hallway–and into a cloud of thousands of small flying insects. “Termites!” my brain immediately registered, despite my never having seen a termite. I shrieked and closed all the hall doors, to keep them out of the bedrooms. Then I popped open one of the doors, shut myself in the study, and searched the Internet for “termites swarming inside house.” The advice I found was to vacuum them up, so I zipped through the swarm as quickly as I could and came back with my vacuum cleaner. They were emerging from the knotty pine paneling high up on the wall of my living room. It felt like a low-budget version of Hitchcock’s “Birds.” After thirty minutes of vacuuming the swarm stopped. One of the difficult things about being a widow is that when bad things happen, it is up to you to take care of them; there is no partner to share the load. I looked up names of termite companies on the local Checkbook, and started calling. The first inspector came the next day, confirmed that the tiny bodies I had saved were termites, and wrote up a plan of attack. I was tempted to sign the contract, but decided to get a second estimate. That was a wise decision; the second inspector was much more thorough, checked every room in the house including the attic, and went inside all the outbuildings on the property. He found evidence of termites in the family room, in the horse barn tack room, and the garden shed. Thanks to all the information I had read on the Internet, I understood the procedures in the contract, and when the technicians came out and applied the chemicals, I did not think they followed the specs. I asked the inspector to come back out and check; I was right, they had not followed the specifications, so the techs returned and did it right. I watched.

Here is what I learned: termites are everywhere in the ground, just like earthworms. Even if you live in a brick house on a slab, termites can enter your home through a crack in the slab. Termites love damp soil, they can tunnel more easily. I have had the leaking gutters repaired, and will be installing extensions to the downspouts. At the horse barn there was mulch piled against a wall, a rotting tree stump, and a Virginia creeper climbing up the side of the barn–none of that helped. It cost about $2700 to repair the barn. The house doesn’t seem damaged. If we had had regular termite inspections, we could have prevented this problem. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.