Infestation

It was a warm summer's night in Warsaw. The kids were in bed and TPCKAM and I were having a classic, late-night, three-hundred-channels-and-nothing-on kind of an evening. We sat on the couch in a vegetative state, flicking endlessly through cooking, garden, real estate, reality, fashion, makeover mince, endless streams of junk tv, before searching the equally endless music channels and tagging another hour on before bed, watching 80's videos and being embarrassed for the poor souls, eternally trapped in time with their big hair and enormous collars. Finally, the spell was broken and TPCKAM announced she was off to bed. After a long night, the power struggle over the tv remote was finally at an end, and I was able to watch sport, undisturbed, for a short while.

At around midnight, I became aware of a strange noise coming from the general area of the dormant fire place. It seemed to be coming out of the walls, or the brick work, or from the piles of wood which line the walls around the fire, as an emergency precaution against any sudden 'The Day After Tomorrow' type situation.

I turned off the tv and approached the area with caution. The noise was quite clear, an odd crinkly sort of sound, like someone was inside the walls scrunching up aluminium foil. I stood staring at it for about twenty minutes, not moving. The obvious thing was to take out a couple of logs and see what was lurking in their midst. I couldn't do it. Confronted with a spider-or-cockroach-on-the-wall situation, plenty of breathing space and no pressure, I can deal with it. But happily flicking aside logs, waiting for something to chew your finger off, I'm not so good.

I decided to go and get back-up. I was aware that it would still be me involved in log removal, but thought that if I was suddenly going to be eaten, slashed or poisoned, it would be good to have help on hand. Stuck my head round the bedroom door, TPCKAM was asleep. Deciding that this was just too ridiculous to actually wake anyone up for, I went back downstairs and looked at the logs again for another twenty minutes. Then I went upstairs, turned on the light and said, 'The wood's making a funny noise, come and listen.'

TPCKAM awoke in some confusion, but was soon brought onboard. She scoffed as I put on my shoes, and we muddled downstairs, me confidently expecting that whatever had been scrunching aluminium foil, would probably now have stopped. The noise was on-going. TPCKAM stopped looking at me like I was weird, and we both sat there, intrigued, for another twenty minutes.

Eventually, and it was now three in the morning or something, the governing council of the autonomous collective which runs the house, decided that I should take the logs outside. Getting the longest piece of equipment that I could, I started lifting the individual logs out at double arms length and transporting them on the veranda. This took about twenty minutes...

We sat down by the fire and listened. Silence. We had our confirmation. The noise had definitely been coming from the logs, not the wall, and there was no remaining evidence of what had been causing it. There seemed to be only one option; some sort of radioactive Dr Who-esque alien space-slime. We sat in the lounge for a further twenty minutes, considering the radioactive Dr Who-esque alien space-slime on the vernada, when suddenly another option presented itself. But surely woodworm couldn't possibly make that much of a racket? Just after 4 a.m., as the grey light of dawn crept across Poland like the haunted groundswell of nationalistic opinion, I went outside with a torch and investigated the wood for small holes. And by God, there they were. I put woodworm into Google, and it all came together. The noise....the holes... The wood....

There is also a large pile of wood in the garage, and every day as we walk past it the noise squirms out at us, as these unseen creatures burrow away. And as the summer turned into autumn, the noise grew louder and louder, crackling and spitting, so that it sounded like we were roasting a pig in the basement. Now, at last, the weather has turned colder and we can finally start sticking the wood on the fire without turning the house into a sauna, and slowly, slowly, the woodpile is diminishing. As you pop the wood into the flames you can hear them scream, these wretched, doomed termite deathbug wood junkies.

Over the last few months, as we've lived with the noise in the garage, I've assumed that woodworm are small, almost microscopic things. But yesterday, as I took a couple of pieces of wood on the short trip to a burning hell, I disturbed one of them. He was enormous. I think he said his name was Norbert. A piece of bark came off and there he was underneath. He looked up at me and said, 'Here, piss off, can't a beetle larvae eat his supper in peace anymore?'

Norbert has since gone to a fiery grave.

Further on-line investigation has revealed that the scrunching little buggers who have inhabited our wood for so long, can grow up to be more than an inch and a half long. When that happens, they probably acquire rights of some sort, including getting to elect a member to the governing council of the autonomous collective. Consequently, the fire has been cranked up and the woodworm are being put to the sword.