If you’re new here and noticing colorful striped tents around Hilo, don’t think the circus has come to town. And if your friend announces that they’ll be tenting next week, don’t expect an invitation to a backyard barbecue.
Tents are on my mind because we just finished dealing with one, our five-to-seven year ritual in a vain attempt to manage those insatiable insects: termites.
By now we know that we cannot outsmart these winged creatures who enjoy dining on our wooden … everything. Doors, floors, chairs, stairs. If we got it, they’ll chew it.
Here’s an old Hilo joke: What did one termite say to the other? “Go come, eat! My house.”
Haha funny, but not when you step barefoot into grainy droppings on the bedroom floor, which by the way, is their poop. I hesitate to write that word so as not to offend some of our more delicate readers, but there are worse ones I could use.
Sometimes, in addition to minute grains, you will find clusters of their opaque wings. Only wings, no body. It makes you wonder what zany activity they engage in that makes their wings fall off. It’s as if human arms were strewn all over the dance floor after a fast and frenzied Macarena.
It’s always amazed me what those critters will nosh on. On one of my trips home before retirement, Dad showed me ukupiles-a brown droppings, an especially large one around the encyclopedia my mother bought for her offspring in the 1950s. The set of 12 books sat untouched for all those years, but brainy bugs had made their way into the hefty tomes, eating through binding and pages.
At least Mom’s efforts benefited somebodies.
I did some limited research on termites — limited only because there was so much scientific information that my eyeballs rolled back in their sockets. What little I could glean, was that these pests arrived in Hawaii from Asia over 100 years ago and have been eating their way through all kinds of wood, although it appears that their tastebuds are not tantalized by teak, redwood, cedar and koa. But stay tuned, because I’m sure that in our hot and humid climate, the menacing munchers are evolving and expanding their picky palate.
I have often wondered, with the swarms of termites I see at night flitting around my reading lamp, why our home hasn’t yet fallen down. There seem to be multitudes of these destructive demons residing in our small domicile. What is holding up the abode? Surely not the onolicious rafters propping up the roof, nor the yummy posts supporting the floor.
How is it that the house still stands? Then a dear friend kindly explained that as a social group, termites work together in order to survive. After taking their turn to gnaw on our walls, they line up and hold hands to prop up the dwelling, making sure the rest of the colony gets their fill before the building tumbles down.
As you can see, termites are such a fact of life for those of us living in Hawaii that all we can do, in addition to calling termite control every so many years, is to laugh about them.
To the wannabe settlers who are pondering the purchase of a house in Paradise, I’m just helping out with due diligence by letting you know some of our perils. Yes, we have volcanoes and lava flows, high surf and tsunami, but if that isn’t enough, we also have termites.
Think twice before writing that million-dollar check.
Rochelle delaCruz was born in Hilo, graduated from Hilo High School, then left to go to college. After teaching for 30 years in Seattle, Wash., she retired and returned home to Hawaii. She welcomes your comments at rainysideview@gmail.com. Her column is published the first Monday of each month.