What a fun week at Cantref Gwennedd! And it won’t be over for at least another week!!
As you can see by Itzl's concerned look, this group is for us to check in at to let people know we are alive, doing OK, and not affected by such things as heat, blizzards, floods, wild fires, hurricanes, tornadoes, power outages, or other such things that could keep us off DKos. It's also so we can find other Kossacks nearby for in-person checks when other methods of communication fail - a buddy system. Members come here to check in. If you're not here, or anywhere else on DKos, and there are adverse conditions in your area (floods, heatwaves, hurricanes, etc.), we and your buddy are going to check up on you. If you are going to be away from your computer for a day or a week, let us know here. We care!
IAN is a great group to join, and a good place to learn to write diaries. Drop one of us a PM to be added to the Itzl Alert Network anytime! We all share the publishing duties, and we welcome everyone who reads IAN to write diaries for the group! Every member is an editor, so anyone can take a turn when they have something to say, photos and music to share, a cause to promote or news!
Monday
Crimson Quillfeather alternate with
ZenTrainer
Tuesday ejoanna
Wednesday Pam from Calif
Thursday art ah zen
Friday FloridaSNMOM
Saturday Gwennedd
Sunday loggersbrat
What was a week that was quite ordinary, suddenly took on aspects of disaster/horror movies by Wednesday. On Tuesday I had woken as normal and went through my morning oblivious to the impending horror that was about to descend on me. It was a warm day and I’d spent the early afternoon vacuuming my friend’s house and cleaning the kitchen and bathroom floors. I came home and some hours later went into my bedroom for my book. I noticed several dark things on the carpet by the window and went for a closer look...wasps! Mostly dead wasps. About 10 of them. Two more were on the curtains slowly moving about. I grabbed my shoe off and smacked the living ones and then grabbed my long handled tongs and picked up all the bodies and flushed them.
I wondered why so many had died and why the others were so stunned. I wrote it down to heat prostration, but continued to wonder how and why so many wasps would suddenly appear in my bedroom. It was the first time this year I had seen any...maybe they were lost and got too hot and died. But how did they get in? The window wasn’t open. In fact the winter’s plastic was still on it, since that window is never opened because it’s too hard to close.
Later that day...more dead and dizzy wasps. I killed the live ones and flushed all the bodies. I grabbed some pj’s, clean clothes and my pillow and blanket, then closed the door and shoved a towel in the space at the bottom. By now I was thinking they were getting in via the old floor heat vents. I grabbed plastic and went back in and pried up the vent covers and put plastic under the covers and left. I spent the night on my couch.
The next morning...more wasps!! Some dead and some alive, but the alive ones were acting normally, buzzing around. I killed them and disposed of the evidence. A decided to go talk to a friend who figured she might be able to hear them if they were inside the walls, so she came over and we looked around the outside...she put her ear to the siding and listened intently...nothing. We went inside and she listened on the bedroom walls...and could hear something faint where the hot water tank was at the end of the closet. I stepped onto the back porch and tried to figure out if there was an outside access to the hot water tank...and saw two wasps climb up the top of the metal siding of the trailer and go underneath the top board and disappear. At the same time my friend yelled. She saw a wasp come out of a hole in my closet wall. The water heater takes up a 3 foot X 3 foot space at the end of my closet and there is a false wall blocking it off to cover it up. The wasps were coming in through the outside wall, into the space for the water heater and then into my bedroom via the hole in the top of the false wall in my closet. Great!! And I discovered by watching while I hung a wasp catcher up outside, that they were bringing worker wasps into my house, carrying them in their mandibles!
The bloody insects were moving in uninvited and building a damned nest around my water tank!!!
I borrowed a foamy from a friend and spent last night on the floor in my living room. I got in touch with a couple of pest control companies today, but they can’t do anything until next week. Wonderful! I refuse to spend the next few days sleeping on the floor, so I got busy, borrowed two cement blocks (I already have two), found some strong pieces of wood, removed my spare bedroom closet bi-fold doors (the only things I could find that would be strong and long enough to act as a platform — I never used the doors anyway) , cleared out most of my spare bedroom that I was using as a sewing room/storage room and made a platform for the mattress. Now I have a decent place to sleep while I wait to have this shudder worthy mess resolved.
I suspect it will take me some time before I will want to sleep in my bedroom again. I HATE wasps!!