A sting in the tail

Over the weekend, we discovered a wasp nest up in the soffit box at the front of the house.  By the length of the wispy bits of wasp nest poking out under the grill in the soffit, it had been up there for a couple of years at least.  We only moved here in May and hadn’t noticed a thing all summer.

Being the wimpish sort, I got an exterminator in.  He duly turned up Tuesday morning and had already spotted the offending nest before I told him where it was.  He seemed quite excited at the prospect of blasting the suckers with pesticide.

Being a chilly kind of morning (and me supposedly working from home), while he fiddled about preparing his pole and nozzle (ahem), I went back into the house to get on with some work.

A while later I heard some exciting knocking at the front door.  When I got down there, he was standing by his van beckoning me to come out (but to run).  Feeling rather perturbed and wondering if the roof was about to come in, I sprinted across the front lawn and stood by his van.  “Look at that”, he said, pointing.  The front corner of the house was covered in a brownish cloud of swarming, angry wasps.

He warned me that the wasps would start falling from the sky soon.  I put that down as typical pest-exterminator-hyperbole (you know how it is...) but when I left for work around noon, the drive was covered with a carpet of dead wasps. 

I passed the postman on the way who was rubbing the back of his neck moaning that something can stung him further down the cul-de-sac.

Well I never … I wonder what that could have been.  He said he was going to sue someone’s ass for it.  Hmm - good luck with that one. 

There’s never a personal injury solicitor about when you need one, is there?