A Huge Termite Tube Discovery

Finding termite mud tubes in a home is nothing new for Port St. Lucie, Fla.-based Matador Pest Control, but the company’s owner, Jaime Vasquez, was taken aback by a discovery one of his service technicians made earlier this year.

Matador technician Kayla Granucci found a mud tube measuring 3 feet in height by 2 inches in width on a home’s stem wall foundation. “It’s the largest one I’ve ever seen,” Vasquez said.

Vasquez said termites had damaged the sub floors, along with wood floors in the living room. Matador did a conventional trench-and-treat termite job and also installed bait stations.

Vasquez has a theory as to why the termite mud tube grew so big. “We located three plumbing leaks in the crawlspace that appeared not to be addressed for some time,” he said. “Moisture issues drew them in.” —

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Durst’s Court Case Compared to Cockroach Soup

As part of the Sept. 8 closing arguments during the Robert Durst murder trial, prosecutors compared Durst’s case to “cockroach soup” in an effort to convince jurors that the New York real estate scion killed his close friend.

“You can’t tell which part of that soup is tainted, and which part of that soup is not tainted. It’s all infected with lies,” Deputy District attorney Habib Balian, who displayed a photo of a cockroach plucked from a bowl of soup on a courtroom screen. Watch the Court TV video.

Durst, 78, is on trial for the December 2000 murder of Susan Berman. He is accused of silencing Berman before she could tell authorities how she provided a phony alibi when his wife, Kathie McCormack Durst, disappeared in 1982. Berman, the daughter of a Las Vegas mobster who became friends with Durst when they met in the 1960s at the University of California, Los Angeles, was found dead inside her L.A. home.