If you are planning to work in your yard this weekend (or any coming weekend) you might want to read this:
If you use mulch around your house be very careful about buying mulch this year. After the hurricane in New Orleans many trees were blown over. These trees were then turned into mulch and the state is trying to get rid of tons and tons of this mulch to any state or company who will come and haul it away. So it will be showing up in Home Depot and Lowes at dirt cheap prices with one huge problem; Formosan Termites will be the bonus in many of those bags. New Orleans is one of the few areas in the country were the Formosan Termites has gotten a strong hold and most of the trees blown down were already badly infested with those termites. Now we may have the worst case of transporting a problem to all parts of the country that we have ever had. These termites can eat a house in no time at all and we have no good control against them, so tell your friends that own homes to avoid cheap mulch and know were it came from.
Read the rest here. It will give you pointers on how to avoid this menace.
It’s April 1 already and Katrina is still the gift that keeps giving.
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I’m First! It’s April 1st! Get it???
This is an April Fool’s Post!!!
Have a great weekend!
We get it Ree-C! You do the same! I just got my bride with ” Honey, Come look! The deer must have came through the area last night. Everyone of your prized rosebushes do not have a leaf on them and all of the beans, lettuce and radishes that came up in the garden are gone!”
After running to the back door to look and discovering that everything was still in tact, she turned and said. “You (expletive deleted)!
These NO termites are easy to recognize. They will be smokin this and driving these.
Malcolm: There’s nothing that says love like, “You (expletive delted)!”
That’s good. That’s very good…….
I was sitting on the couch, trying to drink a first cup of coffee and look at the baloney printed in the morning Komicle, when my wife walked in from the back yard butterfly/hummingbird garden and just handed me the compound lopper and instructed me to cut back the african hamillia, as she had endured several weeks of my truely gifted display of chronic procrastination.
this isn’t an April Fool’s post- it’s actually old news.
It’s also more unwanted parasites from New Orleans
SNOPES
Al this old news is really just a new urban legend. If you get your mulch from a legit company i.e. Lowe’s, Home Depot or some of the larger Garden Stores you will have nothing to worry about. Any tree that has fallen and mulched in the NO area is being sent directly to the landfills. None of the mulch is leaving the NO Area due to the contamination of the flood waters and not the termites. This is just another urban legened like the so called crocidile they found after the flood in NO. The croc actually was found in Brazil.
#8 is correct. This has been exposed as a sales ploy by questionably legitimate termite services.
While termites are a true menace in our part of the world, the “New Orleans” termite infestation is fiction. One local pest control service, whom I’ve used for over 22 years, said an increase in general termite activity can be expected due to the hurricane force winds spreading them more than normal, but no extra precautions are necessary. Regular pest treatments should include inspections for signs of termites. Treatment programs, specifically for termites, should cost in the area of $1000. Don’t be misled by one bid/opinion, seek additional professional input. Rarely is the problem as bad as painted by termite treatment salespeople…but the threat of termites should never be ignored as their damage can be costly. Watch for their mud tunnels against lower sections of your house and garage as well as suspicious “sawdust” droppings and tiny holes in sheetrock.
It’s amazing to me that some folks work so hard at trying to scam someone, rip people off and get something for nothing. If they worked that hard at doing something legitimate, they probably would be successful. Just my two and a half cents…..
If you want more info on this go to
http://www.truthorfiction.com
No, this IS true…. It is not an urban myth…
I know of a family in Madison, Wisconsin who had their yard mulched for free as part of a promotion from a local business. You know, let us mulch your yard for free and we can use it to show to others…
Well, 6 weeks after the mulching my friend was transferred to a job in Atlanta. When the real estate rep hired a company to do the inspection, they found that the entire foundation was contaminated with termites. The house had to be condemned. My friend lost a $180,000 house because of a “free” mulch job. And the termites were determined to be of the “New Orleans variety.”
You can check this out on the city of Madison’s website. Also, the local news station in Madison ran a featurette on the subject. Apparently, their is now another family whose house is infected with New Orleans Termites in Appleton…(near Milwaukee)
First of all when wood products are “mulched” they are treated with insect poisons to eliminate most of the critters that and 99% of all mulch cures for over 6 weeks before being shipped or packed at all. Most termites will have gone to ground by then. Termites eat wood they do not nest in it…
My moron brother and a lot of other nuts tried to tell me this termite thing was an urban legend and that Big Brother government and the quality inspectors at the Big Box stores would keep us safe from infested mulch. Well, I have a coworker who is a hemophiliac and I remember how good Big Brother took care of his blood supply and I am sure that Big Box store will take care of me just as soon their CEO wins the ‘More obscenely rich than the CEO in the mansion next door” contest…
When you dig into the ‘debunking’ stories you find gems like “inspectors have already turned back tainted mulch at the Louisiana border.” Well, some Mexicans have been turned back but it looks like most get through. The termites are just as industrious and the border guards are just as overworked and under appreciated.
I’ll take care of my self, thanks for the warning about the mulch. You can tell that I am a real Texan because I have the state motto (Caveat Emptor) tattooed on the back of my eyelids.
here is the real scoop on these termites…
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MG064 they live under ground again. so if some infested wood was made into mulch, then they will go back underground first and build a new nest if possible..
Reports have been shown on television news in Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota that not only are these New Orlean’s Variey termites capable of destroying a house much faster than indigineous varieties, but that they are capable of flight at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour… That means that a breeding colony of New Orleans Variety termites could conceivably travel from Houston to Dallas in less than 24 hours.
Normally such migrations would be impossible due to natural predators that would halt the termites migratory path. However, due to large scale use of insecticides by giant agribusiness, all of the natural predators of the termites have been made extinct. This leaves a clear path for this new variety of termites, the New Orleans Variety, to wreak havoc across large land areas.
Low income migrant farm workers are most likely to suffer the most from this as crops will be reduced and there will less for them to pick.
It is notable that the Bush administration reduced federal spending to control termite infestation almost 40% since he took office in 2000. The savings were supposed to be used to lower the national deficit, but were used instead in the war in Iraq.
cameraguy…which is it? Mulch or airborne? You cannot have it both ways! The Peoples Republic of Madison, Wisconsin is just that…blame it all on GWB.
cameraguy it takes more than 6 weeks for termites to destroy a houses foundation. If there were that many termites to destroy a houses foundation in 6 weeks the entire mulch would have consisted of nothing but termites. He more than likely had termites for quite a period of time.
#16 you are telling me that this super termite on steroids was going to eat New Orleans to the ground by the end of 08. So if Katrina would not have hit NO, they were doomed anyway. I travel to New Orleans regularly by plane and car and have never seen 10 mph flying termites. I have seen mosquitos the size of kittens.
voltry
Yep I’m telling you that this is a super termite on steroids.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/oct98/term1098.htm
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/MG064
Are they a total bitch to get rid of. Read the above referenced articles the answer is yes. As for the mulch story Snopes and a few other places say it is bogus.
Cheerio
You people are so gullible….
Good ones… cameraguy….
APRIL FOOLS! hahahaha! I got some of you!
….now he tells us…on the 2nd!!
Squawkbox it still doesn’t say anything about flying 10 miles an hour, and gobbling up a houses foundation in 6 weeks. That would be as fast as those ants from the old Pink Panther cartoons.
voltry
Look down the right column.
http://www.southernpine.com/termiteinfo.shtml
Extremely aggressive; a typical colony will consume over 1,000 pounds of wood per year.
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I don’t know nuttin bout no high speeds however
Very mobile; move around extensively when disturbed; not ground dependent. Alates are proportionately stronger flyers.
—————————————-
Bottomline they are faster and more voracious than your “common” termite. If they can eat 1000lbs of wood in a year that tells me the foundation will be gone in about 6 months to a year. Your skepticism may vary.
http://www.bestecexterminators.com/9_termites.html
Formosan termites can eat you out of house and home. The average size colony of Formosan Termites can consume up to three pounds of wood per day.
I am glad you got in on this topic, but you need to read what the other guys wrote. Cameraguy stated that they could consume the foundation of a home in 6 weeks. I know that the foundation of a home is made of more wood than 1000 lbs. That’s what our conversation was about. He was all about April Fools, but if you want to jump in that is fine, but read what we were discussing. My skepticism was about the 6 weeks to eat through a foundation, and the ability to fly 10 mph.
I want to know who actually measured how fast the termites fly. Bet that was a heavily funded guv program.”OK, Bevis,like here they come,like, get out the radar gun,he he he.” “He he,Hey Butthead,like,what if they,like have a radar detector and like,he he slow down?” “Shut up you moron!Like,termites cant hear the beeping sound,he he”.
OK, let’s address a couple of items here…Formosan termites have been in southeast Texas for years…they eat more wood because their queen lays more eggs than our native eastern subterranean termite so their colonies are larger. Can you get termites from mulch? Friends, termite colonies are normally submerged…below ground…hence there name sub(below) terra(earth) any colonies found in mulch are normally new colonies that have just been formed and aren’t really a very big threat to your home. The National Forest Service estimates there are about 70 termite colonies per acre in our part of the world and based on what I have learned and been taught over the last almost 20 years of working to solve termite problems in Houston, most of those “70″ colonies are pretty small and are not real threats. There is no way any known termite could destroy a $180,000 home in 6 weeks…IF termites destroyed your friend’s home, they had termites for a LONG time and either didn’t know it (that would be very surprising) or they just ignored them. Termites flying 10mph…probably so, that’s really not very fast…and it really doesn’t matter how fast they fly as the “flying” termites sole purpose in life is reproduction and flying fast probably isn’t gonna have much effect on that.