There’s an old shed on Owl Acres. It has board and batten siding, and a dirt floor. It’s in need of paint. Many creatures lived in that shed during the time we were away. Firewood was stored there along with other things. With the possibility that the firewood might contain some undesirable elements, we were careful not to bring the firewood into the house until we could put it directly into the fireplace.
Most of my furniture was stored in the basement, but a set of wooden bunk bed frames found their way into the shed.
Hoping that grandchildren might come to stay periodically, we resurrected the bunk bed frames, rehabilitated them into a respectable set of bunks and set them up in the spare bedroom. We bought mattresses, sheets, blankets and pillows, and made them ready for company. And then, one day, while looking for something else, Bryan noticed a fine flour-like powder on one corner of the bunk bed frames. Immediately, hoping against hope, he went to the computer to research powder post beetles.
Photo by Udo Schmidt
Powder post beetles, it turns out, are very fond of untreated wood—at least their larvae are. Over time, they can undermine posts, sills and other structural elements of a house until they collapse. And that’s who were living inside the wood of the bunk beds. Dang!
There are several species of these little critters. One common variety is called a deathwatch beetle because it makes a ticking sound that you can hear at night. These little beasts, only an eighth to a quarter inch long, originally evolved to live in the sapwood of dead trees. Eventually, with the help of fungi, they would reduce the tree to dust. But they like sawn lumber just as well. The adults lay their eggs in cracks and crevices, and when the larvae emerge, they begin chomping away on the wood, extracting the starch, harvesting the nutrients, and passing the rest as frass in the form of a flour-fine powder.
When it’s time, the larvae pupate for a couple of weeks and then emerge as adults. The adults exit the wood leaving holes in the surface and galleries of excavated space behind. They mate, lay 20 to 60 eggs that hatch in five to ten days and start the cycle over again. It can take from a year to several years for the life cycle to complete.
So, this is how a mighty oak can be reduced to dust on the forest floor. I wasn’t anxious to have my bunk beds, and possibly my whole house, reduced to dust! There was nothing to be done but to tear down the bunk beds and get them out of the house. Unlikely as it was that the little devils had gotten out into the wilds of my spare bedroom, they weren’t going to get one more day to try.
The lesson here is don’t store wood furniture in sheds or barns.
Now, what to do about the bunk beds? There’s a chemical treatment to demolish the little felons, and a thick coat of paint to discourage them further. Or should we just buy new bunk beds? I’m leaning toward new ones with metal frames.
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