OT - Very OT....have you ever had termites?
 

We were given a very nice old wooden desk. This desk has been sitting unused in a warehouse for years. We brought it into the house this morning and during the course of cleaning it I noticed a very small area of what looks like termite damage underneath the top of the desk along the outside edge. There are no live insects around but I'm worried about eggs inside that may hatch now that it is in a warm place. There is no telling if the damage is old or new. I don't want to take a chance that there are termites in it but on the other hand the damage could be old and the termites are long gone. Anybody ever deal with anything like this before? I understand there are chemicals etc that I could get from the hardware store to treat this so I'm planning on looking into this, just wanted to get some first hand advice. Thanks!

I don't think you have anything to worry about. We had them in our house and they treated the ground around the house and sprayed the inside, but termites don't usually lay eggs in the wood, more in the ground around the wood and certainly not in something like a desk. Termites like damp, dark places. I suspect the damage is from something else.

I've been doing tons of research on this over the past couple of hours and there are a couple of different types of termites. The majority are the type that live in the ground and burrow through the dirt looking for wood but there is a type that will nest in furniture, they are called dry wood termites and can be brought into your home via used furniture. Unfortunately this is how termites sometimes get into areas where they have never existed before!