Here's a Termite shelter tube being built up the corner of a concrete foundation. It is easy to not notice one of these tubes being built.

Notice the tip of the tube is wet. That is because the termites are actively building this shelter tube right now. You could say this house is being attacked by Termites.

If you were able to stare at this long enough you could see the termites poke their heads out now and then while they are building this tube. Maybe the wet top is how the name "mud tube" was once coined.

Notice the hole at the top of the termite shelter tube. One particle at a time they continue building their shelter tubes until they reach something to eat - someone's house maybe.

A picture of a termite shelter tube at this house. See it?

Maybe you see the termite tube now.

The termites are entering this house by that mud tube as some people call them.

Here you see we broke the tube open to expose the termites traveling inside it. Click on the picture to see the worker termites in the termite shelter tube.

Here in this close-up picture you see a a couple of termite swarmers going back down to the ground and about to pass a termite worker on the way up to the house.

When the termites reach the inside of the house they may build tubes and strange structures out of the same material inside to find more wood. They travel inside these tubes and inside the wood. You might not even see any damage because they travel and chew inside the wood. This is typically the only part you will see outside the wood, IF you even see this. This often indicates they are near exhausting the wood inside and are reaching for more, so this could indicate a lot of termite damage. Do you see any damage? The wood is damaged inside just under the surface.

Compare left and right below.

Before.

This is the same house as above. We took this picture when we did the quote for the customer, just before we scraped off this termite shelter tube pictured above. See the picture to the right only 48 hours later.

Compare left and right below.

2 feet rebuilt in 48 hours!

Here's that same house again only 48 hours later. We returned to do the termite treatment. You see they completely rebuilt this 2 foot long termite tube in only 48 hours! Compare the pics, it's not the same tube.