Environmentally friendly

I think the blue tit I cruelly murdered (or was it bird slaughter) had friends in the underbelly of the animal kingdom.

I went into the bathroom this morning and spotted a few wasps. A bleary eyed count of wasps numbered 17, which is a lot of wasps. Some were dead, most alive although a little dopey, a bit like me first thing in the morning.

I looked out of the window at the old overflow pipe that used to lead to the water tank before we installed a combi boiler. The last time we had a wasp nest, the buggers were using the pipe to gain easy access to the loft. Not on this occasion though.

After the usual Saturday morning routine of getting everyone up and breakfasted then carting Hannah off to gymnastics I had the time to take a closer look.

This time the stripey beasts were making a beeline (intentional and quite good pun I thought) for the corner of the front loft, and there were lots of them.

I reached for the yellow pages and under 'Pest Control' there were plenty of firms claiming '1 Hour Callout, 'Sameday Service', 'Emergency Response'. I discovered these claims were only valid if 'it wasn't a Saturday', 'they hadn't gone away for the weekend' or 'they could be bothered'. Eventually I found a company that promised a call within two hours.

The nest is now sprayed with noxious chemicals, as is half of the house, but the wasps are now no more, although they did have a manic hour or so of being really angry.

So I killed a blue tit yesterday and hundreds of wasps today. I doubt I can claim to be environmentally friendly.