The word for today is "termites." Yes, those infamous, disgusting, ant-like, flying buggy things that eat wood, especially the wood in our houses. Well my house isn't being eaten by these creatures, but my two-car, detached garage is. I was cleaning out a lot of plant overgrowth on the side of it the other day and I had to pull out a couple of viney things that had grown into the shingles of the structure. As I pulled the vines out from in between the shingles, I saw them. Light brown, gross-looking things that looked like they were trying to have wings, but not quite. As they popped out from within the shingles, a couple of them flew towards me and I screamed like a white lady in church.
Anyway, I've kinda known that my garage has had termites for awhile now, longer than I'd like to admit. They've been munching on my garage doors for probably a year now and all I've ever done about it when I've seen them was spray the shit out of em with Raid. Then I wouldn't see them for awhile and I'd think to myself, "it's okay, they're gone." Really, I was ignoring the problem, but for the same reason a lot of people probably would I don't just have money lying around to pay someone to exterminate them.
But when I saw them the other day, I knew I had to make a call for help. I've been joking with my pal the past few months that one of these days I'm gonna be at my kitchen sink, doing dishes, and the garage is just going to implode before my eyes. I always said it to be funny, but hell, it could really happen.
I got on the horn this morning and called Arrow Exterminators. The guy came...he wasn't too friendly at first, but eventually got down to business, finding where in my garage the little buggers had struck. He started explaining to me how they were going to get rid of them, which came as a surprise. I had thought they were going to spray something, but no.
To get rid of termites, they actually plant these hollow stakes in the ground and put a piece of wood inside of them. About twenty or so of these are planted around the structures (my house, too!) and monitored monthly to see where the mites' are by checking the wood in the stakes. Once it is discovered which wood in the stakes are being eaten, the bait n switch happens. The wood is replaced with a "patented" chemical and voila! The bait is taken back to the colony, leaving all of them to perish. Arrow's gonna come for 12 months.
The man started asking questions about the house, which I was secretly worried about, too. I brought him down to my unfinished basement, where he inspected the upper reaches of the ceiling down there. I knew what he was looking for, some sort of trails the termites leave whilst they travel through their dinner, and my eyes followed his flashlight all around. Nothing. Whew!
Once he'd finished the inspection, we started talking about getting it done.
"Just lemme get my tool out of my car and we'll measure. You know, this is gonna be cheap, I can already tell."
"Oh I like that word! It's the end of summer and I'm sucking air here." I had told him earlier that I was a teacher.
"Cheap," as the gentleman told me, turned out to be a whopping $1600! I had been thinking maybe seven or eight hundred, but this was twice that.
"What am I going to do?" I said as a manner of saying "Where do I sign?"
So now my credit card is $1600, or should I say $1742, more in debt, thanks to New York State getting it's sizable piece of my purchase. I should be exasperated, but I'm not. Well maybe just a little, but at least I know that my garage will no longer be in danger of imploding, and having the service only enhances the value of the house. It's only money, right? Well, make-believe money that I haven't even made yet, but I know I'm not the only one with that problem.
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