In 1994, a homeowner in Devon, England, called pest control to report that a mysterious “white ant” had decimated her conservatory. An investigation eventually revealed that the culprit was a colony of millions of subterranean termites, the first and only colony ever recorded on UK soil. The call marked the beginning of a 27-year saga involving hundreds of thousands of dollars of government funds and considerable headaches for the property owner and her neighbors. Many experts thought the UK’s Termite Eradication Program was doomed to failure, but human ingenuity has prevailed. After no signs of termite activity were detected for 10 years, the termite colony was officially been declared dead in 2004, saving the nation from a future where homeowners would have to worry about termite infestations. Today, the UK can say that they’re the only country that has ever won the war on termites.
