termite

Like John le Carré, he creates his own jargon: safe houses are “coops,” spycraft is “artifice,” freelance agents are “units” and deep-cover moles are “termites.”

Take an issue like termites, Gonzales says: it’s much less of a setback—and could be less expensive—to identify and fix the issue before a prospective buyer uncovers it during an inspection.

In 1960, during her first year at Gombe, Goodall observed a chimpanzee she called David Greybeard carefully strip a twig of leaves and use it to root out tasty termites from a mound.

The chimp took a twig, bent and stripped it of its leaves, then he poked it into a termite's nest.

She picked up the abandoned grass stalk, stuck it into the same hole and pulled it out to find it covered with termites.