Help me identify this odd pest in my wall please! (with pictures)


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Old 04-16-11, 02:43 PM
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Unhappy Help me identify this odd pest in my wall please! (with pictures)

So this morning I noticed that on my wall, there is a small pile of what I assume to be some type of animal excrement that was sticking out of my wall, about 1cm long and about 0.2cm wide, and popping from the wall about 0.2-0.3cm

pic:
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So I go to the bathroom and get some toilet paper and wipe the stuff off only to find a tunnel underneath, with little larvae looking bugs crawling through the tunnel. These little larvae were not big and were crawling quite fast through this new hole that I just found. They were also pretty short, about a little smaller than a grain of rice.

pic of the tunnel:
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here's what the stuff on my wall looked like:
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Does anyone know what these holes are from? I've put an apparent size estimate in the pictures and I've never seen anything like this before. The holes look a lot bigger than termite holes and my wall is plaster, so I'm outta ideas as to what these things could be.

here's another picture of the hole:
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Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
 
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Old 04-16-11, 04:51 PM
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I don't know what is in the first picture, but the holes and apparent dried mud in the other pictures appear to be from subterranean termites.

Did the "larvae" look white in color? That may have been adult worker termites.

Termites will not hesitate to chew thru plaster, dry wall, foam insulation, etc. They don't eat it, just chew thru it.

Have you noticed any large swarms of what look like tiny black flying ants? If so, that could be the reproductive swarm which propagate for the colony.

Probe into the wall, looking for soft spots. When you find them, dig deeper to see what's going on. Is there a basement underneath where you can look for mud tunnels and can you probe into the wood for soft spots?
 
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Old 04-16-11, 07:42 PM
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Hi, thank you for the reply. Indeed the larvae looked white and we also found another hole of the similar size about 2 feet below that one. We do not have a basement and I think we will try to prod though the walls. What's the best way to look through the wall without doing damage to it?

I have a plaster wall so we can only look at the studs possibly. I have noticed any winged ones but I have discovered some termite droppings in my garage.
 
 

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