Blogging Pubbitch

The wood worm is not actually a worm, but a small beetle. It's lifecycle starts when an adult beetle lays its eggs in a small crack or crevice in wood. Shortly later the eggs hatch and the grubs start chewing their way into the wood. They spend the next three years quietly chomping beneath the surface, munching away at all that lovely cellulose and leaving behind a fine trail of sawdust (mandible-dust if we're being picky), never emerging to see the sun.

Finally, after those three long years, the now adult beetle chews its way to the surface and flys away, leaving only a small hole to indicate where it once was. This hole is initially the colour of the naked wood and this is normally whitish. Over time this hole fills with dust and dirt and darkens in colour until it's only visible as a dimple in the surface of the, now somewhat weakened, wood.

It takes about 25 years for successive generations of wood worm to sufficiently mangle a piece of wood so that it loses structural integrity and falls to pieces. How do I know this? Because about 25 years ago the wood worm started the slow process of turning the floor boards in my (new to me) house into things that really shouldn't be trusted to take any weight.

Little bastards that they are.

There is a happy ending to this story, at least from my point of view. You see, there a number of chemicals that can be applied to wood that are harmless to humans but turn out to be lethal to baby wood worms. After three years, there really shouldn't be a problem with the blighters and it's increasingly unlikely that your foot will suddenly plunge into the underfloor space without warning. Of course I'll have to live with the fact that I'm executing little baby wood worms.

I can live with that.