Beneath attack by termite army in Gulfport

She survived the Holocaust in her native Holland, where she saw her father and uncles taken to attentiveness camps. Her instruction ended in the third grade when her educate was rehabilitated to barracks for German soldiers.

She grew up meager with only the clothes on her back during that era.

Then she married an airman and settled in America, the land of chance and dreams.

Engle has lived in a modest wood home on Cleveland opportunity in Gulfport since 1988. It was a shotgun house her late husband enlarged previous to he died in 2006; a home she doesn't remember has ever been sprayed for termites.

Now the home is being eaten around her and Engle, 78, doesn't know what she can do concerning it.

She draws a small community Security check every month that barely covers her living fixed cost. Her three grown children have money worries of their own. And her church, like most on the Coast, has more needs for help than they have cash to deal out.

She may have to allow the termites win.

"I don't have any extra way," she said. "I don't have any extra choice."

Engle noticed holes in her walls close to the ceiling of her kitchen about two weeks ago.

"That's the initial time I've seen them," she said.

She called an exterminator, who came by when she wasn't at home. When she returned his call, she was told it could cost $1,500 to $2,200 to treat the swarm.

"He didn't even come in," she said.

Bobby Ware, service center manager for Stark Exterminators in Gulfport, said he talks to people like Engle each day.

His suggestion is to get three or four estimates from reputable companies and make confident the inspectors look inside and outside the house.

Most companies don't charge for the home assessment and some will still work with customers on imbursement plans so treatment can begin, he said.

All homes in South Mississippi are subject to termite infestations.

"There's only two kinds of houses down here -- the ones that's get them and the ones that will acquire them," he said.

And depending on what kind of termite Engle has, she could be eaten out of home and house rapidly.

It's the Formosans that Coast residents have seen swarming lately. They're mating

Every day Engle waits, the bugs are chomping more of her house absent.