Friday, July 17, 2009

Battle won

After a few days of resting from my achilles tendonitus, I was now ready to resume life again. As I looked through the bedroom window this morning, I saw wasp after wasp disappearing into a hole by the pathway to the back garden. This was where I was stung three times last Saturday. Repeated sprayings of Raid had had no effect over the intervening days..

One neighnour has a sister that is very allergic to wasp stings. The other babysits toddlers. Now that I was mobile once more, I could attempt to seek and destroy the wasps' nest. This time I dressed carefully, not in shorts and a tee shirt. I put on long trousers, tucked carefully into long socks. I added a long sleeved shirt, buttoned tight, and gloves into which the sleeves were pushed. Wellington boots were next. The final touch was Anne's bug hat, a hat with a screen that I tucked into the shirt neck. I was ready.

I boiled a kettle of water and poured it down the hole that was under the 4" by 4" edging to the pathway. Wasps still buzzed around me. I leavered the 4 by 4 from its location. There, nine inches to the right of the entry tunnel and previously hidden by the 4 by 4 was the papery nest.
More Raid was applied. I then dug out the nest and crushed it. I then filled in the hole where the nest had been with soil and left the area exposed to the sun.

I called on my neighbours to advise them not to go into their yards for the rest of the day.

Wasps are a perrenial problem in our neighbourhood. Until this year, the nests have been found in sheds and garages, suspended from the ceiling. This underground nest was a new twist.

2 comments:

  1. quite the adventure! wasps are incredible and sometimes dangerous

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  2. Wasps are such a nuisance. They get into our soffet and fascia in our house. We can't get rid of them without taking our house apart! The worst are the carpenter wasps - they eat wood and build nests in it. Yuck! I'm glad this adventure was a "no Sting" day!

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