Are those termite nests?

[Pete Peterson]

Our motor home has light colored wood throughout, it is a 1985 Midas and when we acquired it only had about 40k on it.  We live in Montana and termites don't do well here because of the cold winters.  Since we purchased it we have added lots of miles and some of those were in much gentler climates.  Well, while spending some time in the North Central area of California we got infested with picnic ants.  After ridding ourselves of the ants and many miles later, we found tiny dark spots in several locations on the paneling and the cabinets.  We remembered the ant invasion and my wife asked if the spots could possibly be termite nests.  I had no idea what termite nests looked like but decided to spray and wipe down any suspected areas.  Our "nests" were pretty flat, maybe they had burrowed into the wood? We kept a vigilant eye on our "nests", and as the time and miles went past we thought we had found new "nests".  OK, it's now a larger concern than before since allot of time has passed and maybe it's spreading...were they dormant or something and now reviving.  We were relaxing at one of our local lakes when we found the latest "nest" and it gave more time to re-examine the problem.  I found what I thought was a new spot on a surface at the end of the couch...I didn't see this one before and we didn't try to do more than scrub the surfaces...this one is in a good spot to really examine it.  What's that?  It looks like, it is, there is a staple in the nest...what is going on here?  The other nests have staples too!  It seems with the years going by our poor little girl is growing older and getting "age spots" like her owners...the termite nests were actually the putty used to cover staples used to secure the paneling and had aged slightly different than the paneling.

[Helen Waddell]

Great story, loved it!  Age spots!  Helen