The discovery of some unexpected visitors in our home this week was a bit of a shock. After hearing a sort of dripping sound in the bathroom for a while now, I was wondering if either there was something leaking inside the wall (a potential nightmare after the sneaky ceiling leak we had in the same room earlier last year that took a couple of weeks to track down), or that we possibly had a family of wetas living the good life in our bathroom wall.
Just the other day I finally remembered to take a look out the window on the stairs, which faces the external wall of the bathroom on the side I’d been hearing the sounds, to see if I could see either something leaking or evidence of wetas in the neighbourhood. You know, like a weta welcome mat, or a weta-sized four-wheel-drive parked outside. But no, there was no sign of anything weta-related or leak-related. However, there was something else. Well, hundreds of something else: fecking bees wasps*. Yes, we have bees wasps living in our bathroom wall.
Ick. Totally ick.
I’m not pleased by this turn of events at all, in fact I’m more than a little creeped out by the fact that the noise I’m hearing in my bathroom is the sound of a gazillion little bees wasps shuffling around inside my wall.
What makes it worse is that it’s been so bloody hot this past week but I can’t open the windows on the back wall of the house for fear of being invaded by the winged beasts, since there are so many of them buzzing around the place: you really do appreciate the meaning of “a hive of activity” when you see the actual activity that goes on in an actual hive! Anyway, thank God for air conditioning.
On the day I made my discovery, I broke the news to Fluffy (aka my long-suffering but well-insured husband) that we had a wee problem living inside our walls. His immediate response? To wander around the back of the house, take a look at the entry point that was surrounded by bees wasps and then poke a stick in it. Our unwelcome tenants weren’t impressed by that turn of events and came pouring out of their home sweet home to see off the intruder. I was surprised that the old bugger can still move pretty quickly when pursued by a bunch of pissed of insects.
But really, what is it with blokes? Why do they feel the need to do stupid things like that? Is it just a fixation with poking things in holes or is it something more?
Anyway, the bee assassin* has been hired and will be here on Tuesday to do the deed. I’m looking forward to having my house back.
Note 1: Did I say bees? Turns out they were wasps.
Note 2: Fortunately, the skills required of the average bee assassin are quite similar to those required of a wasp hitman. The dude hired to kill our winged house guests initially looked at them from the safety of the window on the stairs and while admitting that he normally wasn’t keen on killing bees, he said he understood our need to get rid of them since they were living in our wall and there were so damn many of them. However, after popping outside to have a closer look at their entry point, he discovered they were actually wasps. And because of that, he was actually quite excited about disposing of them. And I was excited for him. The wasps, however, weren’t particularly excited about the outcome.
Good luck with that. A couple of years back we discovered similar, happily nestled in the wall lining under the kitchen sink, and also thought it was a pipe leaking, only to go to inspect it and have three big fat buggers fly out at me. There was language happening that would’ve made Gordon Ramsay faint. We got a Bee Assassin in as well, but on top of that there were fun times of hastily opening one of the under sink cupboards, spraying half a can of Mortein in at one go, then rapidly slam the door shut. My Karate Kid ‘wax on, wax off’ routine got pretty impressive by the end of it. IIRC, there was something like 90 of them that I swept out of the cupboards alone. Lord know how many were left in the wall cavity. Oh, and that same Summer I discovered that we had two wasps nests at the back of the section, after I accidently hit one with the lawnmower. Pretty sure I could’ve outrun Fluffy that day.
They’re fascinating, in a “makes your skin crawl” kind of way, and I find myself popping upstairs to have a wee looksie out the window to see what they’re up to several times a day. I have no idea how many there are but did try doing a bit of a headcount last night as they were all heading home for the evening (too hard to keep count when they are coming and going): I spent about 5 minutes counting how many entered their little hole-in-the-wall home, and stopped once I got to 400.
Oh, and rather you than me with the wasp nests … they’re nasty little buggers those wasps and I’m pretty sure that if I stumbled across a gang of them I’d outrun you, Fluffy and probably even Usain Bolt.