messing with the big boys
some may recall how I was attacked by a swarm of wasps the other day and suffered many stings.
No? well it's true- congratulations, you're now up to speed.
Well today I decided to sting back.
I've found the nest, bound at waist height in a tight grey ball that encompasses two branches of one of my apple trees like a mummified beach ball. I was quite a way from it when they attacked so standing near wasn't an option.
I bought some "wasp killer" powder and read on the back that it has to be applied directly on the entrance of the nest (the hope being, I suppose, that they don't have any door mats in a wasps nest and they'll just walk it in all the black and yellow carpets). This naturally implies being arms length away at most and so the suggestion of 'protective clothing' cleared the manufacturers of talking me through that side of things like it was an option and not that important. Memories of what an exterminator told me in my old house when he came to poison a wasps nest in my loft came back to me:
"If there are any still alive when you go up to remove it, don't bother trying to make it back to the loft hatch because you won't make it, just jump through the ceiling between the joists.. cheerio"
I tried several thin white sheets but couldn't see through them and ended walking round the garden like a blind ghost. Eventually i decided to use a laundry bag made of thin black netting except that it's not a bag, it's a kind of springy-sided basket so I up-ended it over my head and put on some gardening gloves, tucked into the sleeves of a heavy fleece.
after about ten minutes of standing in 80 degree heat wearing a heavy fleece and a laundry basket on my head my bottle had gone completely and, unfortunately, I don't mean I'd emptied the bottle of poison, I mean I was cacking my strides.
every time i got within six feet they'd appear and start swirling around my arm and head looking for the way in to my laundry basket and the prospect of all of them getting cosy on the wrong side the netting freaked me out so I needed some other method of application.
I decided to sellotape the bottle of powder to the end of a telescopic pole used for fishing and, before long, I was walking back down the garden, basket on head, with it under my arm like a badly prepared knight ready to joust.
I managed to get the end of the pole over the nest and stay a good ten feet away and started to shake, gently. After a bit of that I pulled myself together and adminsitered the poison... about half the bottle until the nest now looks like a snowball. Then I just stood and watched as bloody hundreds of the buggers came out to see why winter was so early. They furiously covered the outside of the nest as I cackled to myself and then one or two of then spotted the pole above their heads with the poison bottle on it and followed it along to the idiot in the laundry basket who was holding it ten feet away.
You'd think you'd feel safe in 'protective clothing' wouldn't you?
By the time only six or seven had landed on me I was in full panic mode and dropped everything so I could run about the garden like a headless chicken, once again screaming like a child.
Well no stings this time and the deed is done. I shall give it 24 hours and return to the scene of the crime but if there are any still alive I'll be stumped because there are no roof joists to jump between..