on poison, pests, & how we choose to live

Persons watching television for long enough will be familiar with advertisements playing up the dangers of termites and other such small animals that are considered by many people to be pests. Computer-animated sequences containing high drama, witty comedy, and compelling action play during these commercials while a gravely-voiced narrator speaks repeatedly of poisoning, rooting out, exterminating, and eliminating such beings as are blamed with threatening not just the home's structural integrity but also the very health and safety of the people living within it; it is as if these pests were not just eating the foundations of the home but that they posed a risk to the entirety of human existence.

It is not the fault of the termite that he likes to eat the wooden beams that home-builders line up in such nicely even rows in such nicely dark and poorly-ventilated places; nor are termites or their burrowing buddies to blame for their tendency to eat fibrous materials and to aid in the rapid decomposition thereof: Nature in all her finery has equipped these our little brothers and sisters with such tools as that speed up the process of breaking down dead material into smaller and smaller bits until it is once again indistinguishable from dirt. No, the termite is not to blame; it is the human who is to blame for using the one material that termites love to eat and for building his house in such a way as to all but beg for something to eat at it. And then, when the human (living in America) discovers that something is munching on his pricey abode, instead of celebrating this completely natural cycle of decay and rebirth and obviating the issue by changing the materials he uses to build his domicile (such as by switching to stone), he gropes around blindly for the first available, seemingly most simple option, and fills his home – and the home of the termites – with powerful and deadly poisons.

No, there is no excuse for the various extermination companies that here ply their trade; they offer short-term, chemical solutions to a long-term issue that, at its root, requires a complete redesign of everything we humans thought we knew about How To Build Structures That Last. Perhaps with a little fiddling, a bit of foresight, and a healthy dollop of hubris, we can keep termites and other burrowing beasts where they belong: in the woods.

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