Ingela and Patrick Beyers have been running from the truth for years. It was back in 1993 that they discovered the first crumbling floorboard in their house in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans. They found the second a short while later. "Of course we knew," says Angela. "But we didn't talk about it. We just kind of pretended it wasn't happening."

But two months ago the truth finally became impossible to ignore. A tiny mound of dried mud appeared on the bathroom ceiling; when Patrick scraped it aside and peered into the quarter-size hole underneath, he saw them--pale white termites, hundreds of them, scurrying through the dank darkness above. "I freaked out," he says. "I grabbed a can of Raid and blasted it into the hole"--about as effective as using a water pistol on a herd of rampaging elephants.

Termites are a homeowner's nightmare under the best of circumstances. But what Patrick saw in his bathroom ceiling that day were not just any termites. They were Formosan termites--the most voracious, aggressive and devious of over 2,000 termite species known to science. Formosan termites can chew their way through beams and plywood nine times as fast as their more laid-back cousins. Their colonies are huge, housing up to 10 million insects. They nest underground, in trees, in walls--just about anywhere there's wood and water. And they're on the move: long confined in the continental U.S. mostly to Louisiana and a handful of other coastal areas, Formosan termites are now happily chewing their way through real estate in 14 states, from Virginia to Hawaii, and causing property damage to the tune of about $1 billion a year.

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Ultimately, scientists expect to learn enough in New Orleans to stop the spread of termites all over the country--although eliminating them completely will probably prove impossible. But for the Beyers family, "ultimately" is too long to wait. They've signed up for an experimental program the pest-control company Terminix is running to test a new pesticide called chlorfenapyr. The chemical was applied last week; in a month, Terminix will be back to see how well it has worked. If the bugs are gone, friends and family will pitch in to help repair the damage--a skill Patrick's father Virgil Beyers Sr. honed 20 years ago when Formosan termites nearly destroyed his house. With any luck, Kayla Beyers, 4, won't have to do it all over again two decades from now.

--Reported by Jyl Benson /New Orleans and Anat Shiloach /Washington

• biodeterioration : termites, news, general
• termites : general description, Southern U.S.