Of course they are useful in the scheme of things - everything is - even if we don't immediately see a use for certains critters you can bet there is a good reason why they are here - even if it seems its just to drive us daft!
I don't like being in a confined space with one never mind a few having been stung on several occasions over the past 30 years ..... the one that was knocked up and caught between my motorcycle helmet and my face (riding with visor up stopped from this day forth ....) but this thought still makes my skin creep - fortunately for me it was dying - but even now I can conjure up the horror of feeling it squirming on my cheek while 'stinging' the padding of my helmet - thank god it was trapped facing away from me .......
Then there was the one that got my wedding ring finger as I snuggled down in bed - good job I removed my ring within seconds as my fingers and hand swelled up till it resembled a cows udder! It must have crawled into bed while the covers were drawn back and the windows open during the day ......
At the start of my rangers working life we had to empty the litter bins on site and then transport the tied bags about 8 miles in a closed van, with no partioning, to the depot skips ...... no matter how tight I tied those bags - wasps would begin to emerge more and more throughout the journey ........ while driving they would be at the back window but if you were caught in traffic they began to come to the front ...... oh mother - how I hated this - so if you remember 20 years ago a purple and white Wigan Metro van with a very distracted female driver waving her arms about - that would be me on the evening 'litter run'
Cutting back and strimming at this time of year usually resulted in getting stung - one year the willows beside Horrocks Hide had to be trimmed back and I yelped as my hand closed on a wispy branch and a dosey wasp! My colleague who was just climbing over the fence shouted 'OUT! NOW! PAULINE' and got stung 7 times on his head and upper body in just a split second .....
At our old house Ian had taken the plaster off the bathroom wall and wooden battened ready for fixing 8x5 mermaid fake tile boards. The bricks were exposed and full of holes and cracks all around - and yes you've guessed it - we must have had a wasps nest in the roof space. One September evening sat on the loo with the 'big' light on, wasps began squeezing out of the gaps into the bathroom, one after the other till there were dozens of annoyed wasps - getting angrier by the minute as they hit the exposed bulb ...... I've never got off a loo as fast
I bet we had the only bare brick wall in the country where all the holes were stuffed with loo paper!
Last year we had a wasps nest in the garden which we didn't bother about and let them get on with their lives and us ours ....... then something changed in late summer and the wasps became very aggressive - we couldn't even walk to the end of the garden without them coming out in force after us. The same when hanging washing out - two dozen would be round me in seconds forcing me into a run up the garden. The grass didn't get cut for a while then Ian had had enough ..... it had to be done ...... he put on an old set of plastic waterproofs: with the hood up I fastened one of our black 'mossie' headnets tightly on, taped up his cuffs with duct tape and sealed his trouser cuffs to his wellies with tape ....... a pity I never photographed this 'apparition' ....... he set off to mow the lawn like a man on an Everest expedition
We let this nest run down to nothing by November as we don't like to kill things, but it stopped us using our garden for about 3 months. They haven't come back to us this year and if they had I'm sorry to say they would have been rooted out right at the start ..... I don;'t mind sharing but I'm not being dispossed
Pauline
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