At Perseverance Hall, a historic Masonic temple, we meet up with Ed Bordes and Ed Freytag of the New Orleans Mosquito and Termite Control Board.  One of the Eds hands me a business card with a photo of a Formosan termite.  In a stab at entomological humor, the card’s right edge is cut to appear termite-chewed.

  Both Eds are eager to share stories of the Formosan wars.  “I heard about an old fellow who lived in the French Quarter,” Ed Bordes tells me.  “Every swarming season, he would bring out his pop-up pup tent and set it up in his living room.  He’d bring his TV set and a little light in his tent and he would run an extension to it.  He’d stay in there because every afternoon his room would fill up with winged termites.”

  Ed and Ed point out a few sites of damage on Perseverance Hall’s exterior.  But they really want me see the nest inside.

  Plaster’s been removed from some walls so that engineers can assess the destruction.  From floor to ceiling, within one section of wall, Formosan termites have hollowed out the insides, eating away every stud, beam and joist.  They’ve used the digested, excreted remains to build an aboveground nest as tall and wide as a dishwasher.  The thing resembles a giant, flaky French pastry—and has the equivalent structural soundness.  But why is the nest of these subterranean termites above ground?  This is a pied-à-terre.  “If something attacks at one nest—they have multiple nests, they survive,” he says.  “You might kill one nest but probably not all.” 

Par-ty! Par-ty! 

  At the end of the day, Henderson and I retreat to a restaurant in—to my relief—a brick building.  Later, we stroll down Bourbon Street and I get my first glimpse of famed French Quarter hedonism.  Happy tourists weave about, drinks in hand, some ducking under wrought-iron balconies also filled with revelers.

  This being the bug tour, I’m curious about the structural soundness of those balconies.  So the next morning, I wander down bourbon Street, video camera in hand, and zoom in on the wooden undersides of these second-story party centrals.  When I later show Henderson the areas of deterioration, he confirms that termites appear to have been throwing their own soirees up there.

  Henderson has other interesting places to show me.  The Quarter ends at the Mississippi River, where a floodwall protects the below-sea-level city from rising waters.  Here, railroad tracks parallel the levee on the riverside.  Henderson kicks open an old railroad tie and interrupts the lunch of a few thousand Formosans.  That reminds him: these bugs travel well.

  “We’re shipping Formosan subterranean termites to other parts of the United States through infested railroad ties,” Henderson says, The heavy timbers get recycled for building walls and garden beds and other landscaping uses.  Until recently, it seems not to have occurred to recyclers that they might be shipping something more than wood.

  Seven separate Formosan infestations have been found in railroad ties and homes in Atlanta.  “A researcher was able to employ DNA markers to identify where those termites came from,” says Henderson.  Yup.  New Orleans.  A scientist buddy of Henderson’s says infested railroad ties are sold in Texas.  “Customers like to pick up the lighter ones,”  Henderson says, chuckling and waiting for me to figure out why they’re lighter.  Oh, right—digested on the inside.

  “You’ve got whole colonies being transported,” Henderson says.  Formosans are now in 11 states.  And their chances of crossing more borders are quite good.

  Be afraid, America.  Be very afraid.