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Termites in Mulch?
By JLP | March 6, 2006
I just received the following email from my wife’s uncle:
If you use mulch around your house be very careful about buying mulch this year. After the Hurricane in New Orleans many trees were blown over. These trees were then turned into mulch and the state is trying to get rid of tons and tons of this mulch to any state or company who will come and haul it away. So it will be showing up in Home Depot and Lowes at dirt cheap prices with one huge problem; Formosan Termites will be the bonus in many of those bags. New Orleans is one of the few areas in the country were the Formosan Termites has gotten a strong hold and most of the trees blown down were already badly infested with those termites. Now we may have the worst case of transporting a problem to all parts of the country that we have ever had. These termites can eat a house in no time at all and we have no good control against them, so tell your friends that own homes to avoid cheap mulch and know were it came from.
My question is: Can termites survive in a bag of mulch? According to the guy who treated my house for termites a couple of years ago, termites don’t like light (or can’t survive in light). Anyway, have any of you heard of this?
UPDATE: According to Snopes, it looks like this is a hoax. Thanks to commenter Twin for the link.
Topics: Miscellaneous | 3 Comments »
March 6th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/termites.asp
March 6th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Not that I don’t believe your wife’s uncle, but this just has the sound of an urban myth. It sounds similar to those emails that you get saying not to buy soda because it contains formaldahyde (sp) or gas on certain days.
If it is true, then good looking out, thanks for the heads up. Of course I have a ton of lanscaping to do since I just moved into my house.
March 6th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Sorry, I had the page up for a little while before I replied.