It's perfectly safe

Yesterday we had another termite control company out to give us an estimate on treatment and re-infestation.  I could tell he was a high pressure salesman and was doing anything he could to seal the sale.  That's fine.  That's his job.  I work in retail and I know that we, too, are supposed to work for the sale.  He was going into his big spiel about how invasive they would be with the chemicals to keep our home safe and was talking in terms of gallons of termitacide per square foot.  This sounded fairly frightening and toxic to me.  Being the good consumer that I am I decided to ask an intelligent question.

"So ... What is the risk to humans and our pets with all these chemicals you are going to be spreading over our property and home?"


The answer?  "None.  You see (missy - and I swear there was the unsaid missy in his voice) termites are very small so they don't need to ingest a lot of this chemical in order to kill them.  We are bigger.  We would have to drink gallons of this stuff in order for it to do anything to us." (Now run along back to your kitchen and let us men-folk discuss this.)

Of course I don't believe that answer in the least because ants are pretty small, but the chemicals we use to get rid of them have a skull and cross bones on the packaging.  I did what every average person does when they need an answer and went to the Internet.  And what did I find?  That all termitacides are listed as possible carcinogens with the EPA.  You can rest assured that this little missy isn't going to be drinking gallons of the stuff and I'm going to be pretty careful around places that I know it is put.

I can think of so many different ways that he could have talked about the risks of termitacide other than "termites are tiny and we are big."  He could have acknowledged that termitacide has its risks but that they do everything in their power to limit the exposure of those chemicals to humans and their beloved pets.  That would have at least made him sound credible.  Fortunately, Mr. KCW didn't like this company's representative any better than I did and his bid was higher for less work.

In other news, it rained heavily again last night, but nowhere near the twenty-one inches that we had on Saturday.  The room remains dry.  This is good news.  At least there is a little good news.  Keep your fingers crossed for the insurance inspection today.  Hopefully we will find out that we actually have some sort of insect protection.   In the meantime I'm going to cook up some blueberry pancakes. 

My favorite recipe for blueberry pancakes:

Get in the car and go to Cracker Barrel.  Make sure to get a side of turkey sausage to go with them.  And skip the Main Blueberry syrup.  It's just corn syrup with some blueberries thrown in.  Just butter them so you can taste the fabulous blueberries.

My second favorite recipe for blueberry pancakes:

Make Krusteaz Complete pancakes and throw blueberries in them. (That's for days when you are short on time and don't want to pay $8 for blueberry pancakes)

My third favorite recipe for blueberry pancakes is my dad's recipe for pancakes to which I add blueberries.  He called them Hank Snow's Favorite Pancakes. (I have no idea if that claim is actually true. I don't even know if my dad ever met Hank Snow, but Hank Snow's name was evoked often in my house growing up.) 

1-1/2 c. flour (just regular all-purpose - nothing fancy here, although I like unbleached)
3 t. baking powder
1 t. salt
1 T sugar
(Sift all those things together)
Blend together 1-1/4 c milk and 1 egg.
Mix your dry and your wet and then mix in 3 T melted butter or shortening. (My dad always used shortening, I use butter.)

Pour about 1/4 c of batter on a hot griddle then add a generous handful of blueberries right before flipping the first time.  The blueberries will most likely split open when you flip your pancakes, but that's ok.  I use frozen blueberries and run them under some warm water prior to cooking the pancakes.

 

The Damage

I finally got around to sending pictures from my phone to my e-mail so I could put them on my computer so I could share them with you.  (Aren't you just so excited?)  So in case you have never seen a house that has been eaten from the inside out by termites, the picture on the right is what it looks like.  Not very pretty.  And this is one of the better parts. 

About the only thing that is usable from the entire room are the windows and the doors.  As far as we can tell the roof structure is still in good condition and isn't infested.  We'll find out as we dig into it.  but all the walls, siding, insulation and weather barrier is completely shot. 

Here's a picture of where we have started the demolition process.

For now the plan is to get down to where we can start over.  We are thinking about moving one of the windows down to the end you are currently looking at.  That will give us windows on all three sides.  We'll have to see, though.  Essentially we have a 12'x21' space that we get to play with.

I'll post more later as we get moving on this venture.  For now I get to go talk to another contractor.