Thursday, 16 June 2022
There are nightmares and then there are nightmares. I had the nightmare kind last night. Usually, what I classify as a nightmare is me dreaming I’ll have to go back into the classroom and teach again. I consider myself lucky when I came out alive in 2014.
When I do have one, the “nightmare” is usually one of four things: I’m late and can’t find my classroom, I can’t find my office to get my notes because they changed the layout of the offices, I didn’t prepare for the class and have no idea what to cover, and I’m in lab and cannot get students to do anything.
Last night was more than a little different. I was asleep and waked when something ran across my pillow towards me. It looked like a scorpion doped up on steroids and muscle bound. Fully awake, I jumped out of bed and started searching around and under the pillows for the intruder. I found nothing. I knew I was awake, heart palpitations and all and even rechecked the bed, under the sheets, etc.
It’s not like we don’t have scorpions. We do. They arise in the strangest places. One student brought one in to me they had collected crawling out of the drain of their bath tub – on the 15th floor of a condo.
A lot of people like to put chickee huts in their back yards near their pools for shade. They often get members of the Seminole tribe to erect them and weave the thatch roofs. For some reason, scorpions love the thatch of chickee huts. If you take a black light out at night and shine up into the thatch of the hut, you are more than likely to see scorpions glowing in the dark back at you.
Maybe my dream was brought about by the scheduled visit today of the termite man. I have a contract with Huelett. For a yearly fee, they’ll come out and take action on any termite signs you may have. What I like about Huelett is they don’t require you to “tent” your house to treat. They do spot treatments and once a year come out and do a complete inspection.
Tenting is the pits. You have to bag everything up that might absorb the poison used, stay two nights at a hotel, and then unpack everything, wipe down the cabinets, and put everything back.
South Florida is blessed with termites. The Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) says at least 21 species have been recorded in the state with six of those species as invasive. IFAS breaks them down as subterranean, dry wood, damp wood, and higher.
For the subterranean, two are native and three are invasive. The native subterraneans are Eastern subterranean and Cuban subterranean. Invasive subterraneans are Formosan, Asian, and West Indian. Formosan have been known to eat doors hollow in high rise condos, all the more remarkable since they have to provide tunnels to connect them to the soil.
As far as dry wood termites, we have a native Florida dry wood termite and two invasive: West Indian and Western.
We only have one wet wood termite, the Florida wet wood termite.
In the Higher termite category, there is the Florida dark winged subterranean and the cone headed termite (also know as the tree termite). Higher termites don’t have the typical symbiotic flagellates in their intestines which contain symbiotic bacteria that allow the digestion of cellulose. However, some of them may have amebae which have the bacteria.
Termite companies are a booming business in South Florida. Some are highly ethical and some not so ethical. There was one community in Fort Lauderdale near the beach that was found to have so many chemicals for subterranean termites in the soil it was considered toxic. Companies would repeatedly treat properties every year pumping more chemicals into the ground.
Termite season is pretty much year round in subtropical Florida but I mostly note it when they swarm for their mating flights and they drop back to earth – in my pool and drown. Sometimes the pool has enough termite carcasses to be very noticeable.
Nightmares withstanding, I’ll check the sheets and pillows tonight before I turn in!
Stay tuned!