Once a year, on a warm fall day, these  winged creatures emerge by the thousands.

Western subterranean termites.

They follow the first rain  after the dry California summer,   pushing through the softened soil.

And there’s no stopping them.

They crawl through cracks in the road … … and holes in tree stumps.

They’re envoys from an underground world.

The colonies send them up, these swarming termites  called alates.

With wings that last just hours,   they’ll flutter away, find a mate,  and start colonies of their own.

It’s a crucial operation for  the survival of the species.

So, soldier termites stand guard over the crowd.

Soldiers have huge heads, with menacing  mandibles to defend against predators.

In the everyday life of a colony,  soldiers watch over the workers,   these milky-white nestmates that rear the young.

Because they’re both blind,  this soldier vibrates its head …   to warn the workers away from danger, like this  exposed spot where the bark has peeled away.

Out in the open, they could be picked  off.

So, they retreat to safety.

Danger is at its highest on that momentous  day when the alates come out and swarm.

Ants attack them as they emerge … and the  termite soldiers are quickly overwhelmed.

The ants cart the alates off, bit  by bit, to feed their hungry colony.

Spiders also make off with a few.

Everyone wants a piece of them.

The survivors fly a short distance,  sometimes just a few feet.

Alates can see, which helps them  find mates from nearby colonies,   where the same exodus is underway.

They shed their wings and the male  follows the female’s scent pretty closely.

Soon, they’ll dig into the earth and start their  own colony, crowning themselves king and queen.

These two alone will make thousands of termites.

They all groom each other to get rid of  anything that could make the colony sick.

And the workers forage for the termites’   only food – the cellulose that  helps give wood its structure.

Termites eat decaying trees and break them  down.

In that way, they’re incredibly useful.

But they become our enemy when they  go for the wood inside our homes.

They build tubes out of saliva and  soil to connect their nest to yours.

The insects dry out easily and need these  covered shelter tubes to stay moist.

Once they’re in, they chow down  along the grain of the wood.

Sometimes, you can see their most recent  lumber meal inside their translucent bellies.

Then they pass on some nutritious liquids to  the young’uns, yep, through their backside.

This feeding style is called  anal trophallaxis.

Bon appétit!

But hey, you don’t have to invite them  for dinner.

Just call pest control!

And if you see one of these,   you want to do this ... to drive those tenacious  termites back outside, where they really belong.