A few nights ago on Tuesday evening we were swarmed by hundreds of thousands of termites. Having done some research after the crisis I think they were drywood termites.
This is a Goggle image screen capture. The carcases we found outside and on the roof the next day looked like these.
What came inside were only the bodies. The wings were left outside, likely falling off as these critters crawled in.
It was just getting dark, Colin was getting out of the shower and I was preparing dinner when we both started feeling things all over our body. Not just one or two but 30 or 50 crawling insects. We started swatting at them. They would not stop coming. The screen door was closed but they kept coming and coming and dropping on our heads and backs. We looked up, they were pouring in from the ceiling vents, they were crawling through the tiniest of areas. How were they getting in? We finally got smart and closed the vents and the windows and turned on the A/C. They kept falling from the ceiling. They were everywhere, on us, on the counters, on the floor, on the bed, crawling on the carpet, even in the dogs water dish.
There are none in this shot but they were falling into the shower through this surround shroud that does not leak so how were they getting in? Here you can see liquid drops along the edge, Colin had sprayed with insecticide.
During the heat of the battle we never stopped to take photos. Our mission was to kill these things. We had no idea how they got into the RV but had visions of them having infested the ceiling. It was like a horror movie seeing hundreds of termites crawling out of this area of the shower.
In this photo, after being sprayed you can see just the one termite crawling out. You just have to imagine seeing that area full of dark squirming insects., that would then drop down into the RV.
We spent 6 hours hunting and killing these pests. We used paper towels to kill them and pick them up. After the first hour when it seemed it would never stop Colin got some insecticide which we sprayed around all of ceiling vents and any possible opening. The CedarCide did nothing so we had to use the heavy duty stuff. That merely slowed them down. They just kept coming.
This is a small area of our Queen bed. There were hundreds of them just on the bed.
Colin would vacuum them up while I dealt with the ones in the kitchen and the ones that got into our dishes cabinet. They just kept coming back.
We had been fighting them for 5 hours, we had not had dinner and I was exhausted. Colin found me sitting here, I had fallen asleep sitting up. I guess I had sat down for a moment, you can see I still had my killing cloth in hand.
I think he took my glasses off an eased me down. After a 30 minute nap, I completed our dinner and we ate at midnite.
I think I went to bed about 1:30AM and Colin says he stayed up until 3:00AM patrolling and killing. It was worse than a horror movie. We were literally invaded by hundreds if not thousands of insects. Colin estimates that we killed at least two thousand of them. The next morning, the clean up continued, outside everything was covered with mostly dead bodies but many were still wriggling. Inside we had just a few crawling around. We continued to spray all morning. Termites like water and they were in the sink, under the kitchen dish cloth and swimming in the dogs water bowl. In wasn’t until late Wednesday that they stopped dropping from the RV ceiling.
We found out that these swarms just happen from time to time and the locals simply accept it. They sit in the dark and wait for the swarm to pass. When we were hit we had several lights on inside. There is also a larger very bright security light at the front of our yard and that is likely what brought the swarm our way. We were told that this usually happens for three nights in a row. At this point we were concerned that these pests were in the walls of our RV which are steel and foam but would keep coming out and start to eat our wood cabinets. We called an exterminator at home who told us that we would be alright as long as we got the RV fumigated within a month.
Most of the RV’s have left and there are three empty spaces between us and the next RV. They only got a few bugs but they normally sit inside in the dark. The next RV had about 50 insects come in and the last RV had none but he had sprayed chemicals for ants a few hours earlier so that might have deterred them. Our night watchman had his home swarmed in the Colonia that night but our day worker Ishmael had none. Speaking to friends the next day in Mazatlan they mentioned they had seen termites swarming one restaurant on Olas Altas yet leaving the others alone. A week ago we had friends over for happy hour ( it was on March 18th ) and we were swarmed by a small batch of termites sitting by the fire pit. They had been attracted by the bright security light and the fire which we soon shut off. We wondered if our invasion on March 25th, exactly a week later had anything to do with this enormous attack.
The morning after the attack we had Ismael clean the RV roof as it was covered with dead bodies.
Colin also removed the Fantastic Fan covers to check how many insects were trapped under the shrouds. We wanted to clean the area so that we would be prepared for the second night invasion which never happened. However last night, the third night, we had about 50 winged termites flying around but only one got inside the RV. We sure hope that this is the end of the story.
