doctorsteve, I live in Florida which has been called (among other names) the termite capital of the world. I have also seen the damage that termites can do if unnoticed. And yes, I have seen and treated termites in mulched areas close to my house. The current trend of protecting the inside of the house without treating the inside of the house, is a concept which I whole heartedly support. Therefore I would mulch with the most effective material BUT I will inspect my whole landscape, in a regimented fashion, to satisfy myself that I do not have an incipient problem. I would hope to catch problems early because I know that it is much more holistic to treat a landscape problem in its earliest stage.

Im in San Diego. Im pretty sure that the pellets are termite pellets, they look exactly the same as the pics shown via a quick google. Personally though, Im more inclined to believe the first guy who said that there were termites pellets in the attic,but he didnt believe there were any termites present currently. My reasoning for this is because the ants were patrolling in and out of the area where the pellets were. The ants at anyrate live outside and come in whenever there is food left about, and since there are multiple people, thats pretty often during the summertime. The ants are a pretty simple nuisance and just takes a spraying of an ant trail leading into the house. Are there any companies or organizations that will offer inspection services and ONLY inspection services? I would like to get the firsthand professional opinion from someone thatdoesnt profit from reccomending fumigation. I basically just wanna remove any doubts of termites in the area for myself, as well as provide some proof to a realtor that the proper action was taken, should the house be sold at a later date.

Last weekend we found some bugs in the house and I thought they were termites, but it turned out to be winged ants. We called ABC Pest and Lawn to come out to treat the area since we used them for our previous treatment and have a contract with them. They use Termidor. While I was still thinking they were termites, I went outside to look for a tube on the house and found one that ran right up beind where the gutter comes down on the side of our house. It was up about 3 feet! This was a different spot than the area we had treated last year. I checked the nearby termite station and fireants were in there, so termites were present there too since fireants like to eat termites. We had the guy come out from ABC Pest and Lawn and he checked the tube but could not find a spot where they were actually getting into the house - THANK GOODNESS! He also found one of the ants and confirmed it was an ant and not termites. So, they will be back out to treat that area for termites when it dries up (it had rained yesterday morning so it was too wet) next week and I will put bait out for the ants. I had also found where some ants were getting into the weep holes between the bricks on the other side of our house and he suggested that along with the bait that I also use an aspirator (one of those bulb/snot suckers we used for our babies) to suck up some DE and shoot it into each of the weep holes and do a lot of it into the one where the ants are getting into the house. Then he suggested using steel or copper wool to stuff into those holes to discourage the ants from getting in again. It will still allow the house to "breathe", but keeps bugs out.

Im not trying to be childish at all it just seems that there are alot of people on this forum that are so critical about random stuff. I apologize for not using punctuation but it seems to me that a garden forum is kind of a dumb place to have a hen pecking contest, Im sorry I am the VP for one of the largest fiber operations in TX leaving me with very minimal time to even post questions much less make sure that all my I's are dotted and T's are crossed, and she didn't even offer any helpful advice it was just blah blah blah I think your stupid and I'm smart because I am ever so eloquent and use punctuation marks big whoop my 4 year old learned that this year. Listen guys I am an extremely hard working business woman who is a mother of four and a leader to many and if this was and email to one of my clients, or sales reps I would make sure all of the punctuation marks that were necessary were there and I had sectioned my thoughts into stanza's and paragraphs but Im doing the best I can with what little time I have life is too short and I can't believe I'm writing this, because this is five minutes of my life spent in trying to offer up some insight to the people on this forum that I feel hide behind their computer and have nothing better to do than to pick fights on local POP servers! So that being said I bid you adue and just know I really dont want to make garden buddies and I will eventually get the help I need I just use this as a reference point, I hope I didn't offend anyone with this post but if I did get over we are all here to do what............ you got it grow some tomatos :) have a good one!