Termites eat wood, so their droppings are made of wood—and they don’t decompose. That’s why it’s important to either clean up or mask termite droppings after a treatment or fumigation. There are two main reasons for this:

1. To avoid mistaking old droppings for new activity.
   Let’s say a home is fumigated due to drywood termite activity in the attic. If the droppings aren’t masked or removed, and the homeowner experiences signs of termites again five years later, a future inspector may spot those same droppings and assume a new infestation—possibly recommending another fumigation. But the reality is, those droppings may have been there all along, left over from the previous issue.
2. To assess whether the treatment worked.
   If I mask all the visible droppings and return a year later to find fresh droppings on top of the masking agent, I know there’s still an active infestation—or that a fumigation failed. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, this is one of the only reliable ways to know.

You might be thinking, “Doesn’t every company do this?” Actually, no. Especially not during real estate transactions, where the termite company typically works for the agent—not the homeowner. And with fumigations, it’s common for no one to be assigned the task of dealing with the droppings afterward. When time and resources are tight, it’s something that often falls through the cracks.