Over the past week or so I thought it was odd that there were a couple of dead wasps in the bathroom sun tunnel. I told Mike we should probably look into it. That’s the last I thought about it, until yesterday.
Standing at the top of the stairs, I could hear an awful sound coming from the attic. I’ve known we had mice now and again (which we’ve been taking care of), and this was nothing like the like the scrabbling sound of little mouse claws. This was more like a continuous crinkling of paper. A tap on the ceiling with a pole made it stop, but I wasn’t relieved. I noticed a quarter-sized water stain on the ceiling. Unfortunately, when I tapped it, it flexed and swelled as if made of paper and a small crack formed — definitely a bad sign.
I called Mike to come look at it, and to my horror there were hornets filing out of it. Mike attempted to cover the crack with duct tape, but the location of the hole at the top of the stairs made it difficult to reach. He called me over to help him hold the pole (applicator of choice for said duct tape). I took one look at the hole and it just kept getting larger. I panicked, and started screaming like a little girl; refusing to hold the pole and help him. I was frozen in terror for some reason. After being stung a few times, Mike gave up.
Seeing as it was labor day we knew it would be hard to find an exterminator. Checking the yellow pages, we found one that said “Emergency 24-hour” and to our luck he was able to come out. He was at the house in about an hour. By that time, most of the wasps that had come out of the hole were convening in the bathroom because they thought they could escape via the sun tube. He threw a smoke bomb in there and closed the door. Next he doused the nest with spray, waited a few minutes and then got busy pulling it out of the ceiling. Words can’t describe how utterly disgusting it was — piles of hornets, larvae and nest debris all over the floor. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. The exterminator even cleaned up the mess and only charged us $175, which I think is pretty good considering it was a holiday.
Now we have a gaping hole in the ceiling about 6″ x 18″ and a few straggler wasps continue to fall out. At least we were home when it happened, and I thank God it wasn’t in my bedroom! EEW!
