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| Steve, Wasp-Killer-General in full regalia |
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| Steve practising his deadly craft |
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| For the wasps it was "like the Somme" |
At night sleep arrives reluctantly as I try to separate my tinnitus from imagined buzzing.
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● Plus my novels, stories, verse, vulgar interests, apologies, and singing.
● Most posts are 300 words. I respond to all comments/re-comments.
● See Tone Deaf in New blogger.
Thursday 1 November 2018
Aeternum vale
Julie, our cleaning lady, rang to say that dead wasps had accumulated "in hundreds" behind the books we keep in the bathroom for those whose motions (Britain is a country devoted to euphemism) have slowed down with time. I've already mentioned the wasp problem in Late-life Affliction and I sighed. Cleaning ladies are like jewels and Julie's epidermis could not be set at risk.
I googled Disinfestation, Hereford, not knowing what it would cost. Under such circumstances it's always "a lot" and so it proved. Also they demanded payment in advance.
I expected the process to be psychologically purging, that I would emerge in some way shriven. This was not the case. The aftermath was messy since I was faced with gathering up the corpses of wasps which had travelled far and wide in the house to do their dying.
In the cardboard box which had served to deliver my coffee pods and which had been turned into a wasp mausoleum I noticed uneasily that some of the yellow/black striped invaders were still showing signs of life. I returned them to nature by dropping them over the garden fence hoping that predators higher up the food chain than wasps would deliver the coup de grace.
At night sleep arrives reluctantly as I try to separate my tinnitus from imagined buzzing.
At night sleep arrives reluctantly as I try to separate my tinnitus from imagined buzzing.
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A bit more like Hiroshima than Somme. Unless you consider the wasps fellow Brits, in which case your scenario is more akin to present day USA.
ReplyDeleteThat Battle of the Wasp must have been awful. Steve looks to be a good sport about it, though. He looks cheery and fearless. I'm trying to imagine having a job like that. I don't think I would be either cheery or fearless. I hope this is the last of them. Also, sorry to hear about the tinnitus.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: "Social wasps" (who invented that designation?) expect to live 12 - 22 days, so Steve must have disappointed most of my little bastards. Given they'd been around my house for more than three weeks they must all have been natural-born Brits, supporting Brexit and reading James Paterson novels in their spare time. I chose the Somme because I hoped they terminally experienced the sense of futility that prevailed in that battle. Though we've all changed our mind since, there was arguable justification before Hiroshima.
ReplyDeleteSquirrel Hill. I must confess I was flirting with genocide and - through Steve - I was well equipped for it. Early one morning I was able watch a distinctly logy wasp crawl laboriously up the bedroom curtain, noting the delicate and coordinated activities of its antennae, head, wings and legs. Hamlet got there first and might just as easily have said, "Oh what a piece of work is wasp." All that complexity invested in something I only saw as a smallish irritation. Do you have any Buddhist sympathies?
Collette: Also articulate. He used "cathartic" in subsequent conversation.
Tinnitus is stress-driven and could be said to be the apotheosis of anti-music. I pleases me that singing puts tinnitus to rest. Should you be presented with a situation demanding your cheeriness and fearlessness, may I recommend you try singing. And if you're lucky enough to be part of a couple at the time try Purcell's duet "My dearest, my fairest." It's got true gaiety.
Well, they didn't experience a sense of futility for long because Steve, I suspect, used one big bomb. And the bees - working in their little food factories and nurseries- could hardly have expected the big bomb. Had smilin' Steve been at them relentlessly for 3 months or better, killing a tiny fraction of them daily, and being stung once per day, I could better buy into the Somme imagery. All this from a man who recently annihilated thousands in a hornet nest war. Well paid too.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: If we are to persist with the Hiroshima metaphor we need to change some of the the parameters. Instead of the bomb being delivered by a modified B-29 from 26,000 ft, imagine instead a Cessna 172 at ground level, at touching distance; imagine it somehow being able to maintain this altitude as it circled to check the damage. Yes many of the residents died instantaneously but a lot more, knowing what had happened, angrily raced along the ground, tapping menacingly on the Cessna's fuselage, eager to get inside and wreak revenge on the Cessna's crew. As Steve mentioned beforehand, "They won't be happy."
ReplyDeleteDespite his experience and his protection, one of these enraged insects managed to get under his substantial anorak and sting him on the back at waist level. Confirming your experience.
I always knew you were a competent guy and somehow sensed you were a heroic competent guy. Now I have further confirmation. I trust the reward came in gold bars.
My bombing was done at an altitude of about 7m. on a roof. Initial attacks were with aerosols, but the tiny entrance hole to a huge colony inside the wall eventually required an application of poison powder from a plastic squeeze bottle. This closed the range from 3m to 1m from the entrance and so required night operations w/ artificial light. Not being much of a night-owl, I flirted with dusk (and the prospect of de-roofing onto a ladder at altitude while being swarmed). Every other night for a week finally put enough powder on target. Apparently the hornets incidentally track the powder back to the nest, where it does its slow work. Somme from skimming Cessna height.
ReplyDeleteWasps are unaware of the recession we are going through and this glorious summer has made sure we are still combating them in November. However, the summer also provided plenty of barbeque opportunity which more often than not happens on Alan titmarsh decking so providing ample food that was dropped between the decking for Ratus Rat to enjoy along with fortnightly bin collections I feel I am fighting a war on several fronts something Napoleon and later Hitler found was not recommended . However, I have a mortgage and will continue to fight on both the Somme and Hiroshima
ReplyDeleteMikeM: "... the prospect of de-roofing onto a ladder at altitude while being swarmed". Says it all. No need for metaphors
ReplyDeleteUnknown: Ian Fleming's older brother, Peter, did all sorts of adventurous things in the thirties, wrote books about them, married a famous film-star and retired at a comparatively young age to a manor-house at Nettlebed in the Chilterns. There to become a member of the squirearchy, an ill-defined but wealthy elite in receipt of several unique privileges. One of these was an annual invitation to a rat-hunt held in the cellar of Harrod's storage warehouse to the west of London. Good breeding and expensive education were essential as was - as you might imagine - being a good shot. Champagne was served.
As a leftie I would normally slag off such exclusive events but I can't help admiring the way this one converts pest control into a demanding sporting proposition. But without all the hoo-ha of dogs baying and men in red jackets tootling on horns. More difficult to achieve this with wasps.
Do British wasps actually hibernate and thus posed a risk to humans having a crap in your home or did you merely order their extinction a week early?
ReplyDeleteObv. doesn't refer to WASPs.
Sabine: It seemed coincidental that their corpses accumulated in the bathroom (that's a UK type bathroom, by the way): they didn't arrive there to sting only to die. Crappers in any case have two further options chez Robinson.
ReplyDeleteIn other upstairs rooms the wasps flew lethargically looking for a landing place where they became easy targets for the Raid aerosol. I'd endured this for three or four weeks before calling in the marines. A week early? Do you mean prior to Bonfire Night? As far as I know wasps are unbelievers, certainly not Catholics.
Perhaps it's time to write another poem. Good subject. Think of all that Plath did with bees...
ReplyDeleteMarly: Someone got there before me. The following, by Charles Gardiner, goes on for lots of verses:
ReplyDeleteThe Hornet set in an 'oller tree,
And a proper spiteful toad were he;
And he merrily sung while he set,
His sting was as sharp as a bayonet.
“Now who's so bold and fierce as I?
I fears not bee nor wopse nor fly.”