Warning for the squeamish: lots of bugs about in this blog entry!

The deathwatch beetle is a fascinating insect whose larvae eat and bore through wood. The adults also live inside the wood for some time (often years!) and make a noise hitting their heads against the wood that sounds like a tapping noise. Those sitting vigil at a deathbed have heard these sounds in old buildings and considered them to be like the ticking away of the last minutes of the sick person's life. The deathwatch beetle's distinctive sound is said to have perhaps been the inspiration for Edgar Allan Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" story, wherein a murderer thinks he hears the beating of his victim's heart under the floorboards. You can hear its distinctive sound here:
http://www.arkive.org/death-watch-beetle/xestobium-rufovillosum/video-09a.html
​
Before we bought our house in Lonlay l'Abbaye, it had been used only periodically as a secondary residence, was a bit neglected, and subject to some moisture problems. Unfortunately, these are ideal conditions for insects like the deathwatch beetle to attack the wood. Our timber surveyor found evidence of deathwatch beetle on the ground floor (circular exit holes), and common furniture beetle had attacked most of the timber walls and floors, which all needed to be replaced. The common furniture beetle is not nearly as entertaining as the deathwatch beetle, but it can be even more destructive. It is commonly referred to as "woodworm." Fortunately, our main beams were only lightly affected. They will be fine. But the wood floors were done for, and all had to be torn out and burned.

Like a condominium with different residents on each floor, we seemingly had had wood-eating insects of all stripes inside our small place: deathwatch beetles under the kitchen floor (tic-toc!), common furniture beetle in the living room and upstairs bedroom floors, and more exotically, capricorn beetles in the attic! The capricorns are famous in France for being destructive pests in old houses, but some variants of the species are protected creatures in parts of Europe.
We did not see any live capricorns, or deathwatch or furniture beetles, but we could see how ruined the woodwork was in November. Our wonderful builders have taken all of the bad wood away now, and treated the beams and remaining unaffected wood for good measure. When all of our renovation is done, we hope to keep the former "condo" residents away by keeping our place warm and dry. We are done with them, no matter how colorful their names or literary lineage!