The Sting

I told the prospective buyer of a house that he had a wasps nest in the void under the floor of his sitting room.

A few months later after he had purchased the property he rang me up and confirmed that yes, he had found it.

It had been active and had taken all the expertise of an exterminator to get rid of the nuisance.

He then expressed amazement at how I could possibly have known about it given that there had been no loose boards or other means of access. The contractor too had been mystified about a call out on the basis of the unqualified hunch of a third party.

I was reluctant to disclose my secret.

I could have spun a fantastic yarn about being a wasp-whisperer. Perhaps I was actually in tune with nature. A hyper sensitive ear could allow me to detect the faintest of insect noises and interpret them as an indicator of the nesting intentions of a swarm. In my youth, having been stung numerous times by a persistent wasps I may have developed a super-hero trait. My favourite jumper had been a black and yellow striped one giving me the instincts and behavioural characteristics of the species. I was a fan of The Police after all.

I managed to maintain an aloof air out of modest professionalism and my inquistor finally gave up. I wallowed a bit in his parting comment that I was just " a bloody good man for the job".

Between you and me I had stumbled across the whole thing more out of accident than a determined investigation.

If you simply stand still for a few minutes outside a house, as I often do, in order to observe the construction and condition, chances are that you will blend into your surroundings and so assume a degree of relative invisibility to the creatures of nature.

This has been the case where a cat has not seen my static form until the last moment when wandering nonchalantly around the corner. The panic and horror is a sight to behold. I am sure it is the same for the cat as well.

I have had a similar experience with birds in flight who have been genuinely shocked to find a human being just stood motionless in a particular position on a regular flightpath around a property.

On this particular occasion I just happened to be in the right position at the exact moment that a swarm of wasps returned from harassing a family picnic or the queue at an ice cream van.

After a brief period of reconaissance they duly filed, in some semblance of hierarchical order, through the regular holes in a clay airbrick, just one of many similar vents around the lower courses of that particular house.

On the basis that they did not re-emerge led me to speculate that they resided there as a permanent home. I may have thought about placing my ear at the perforated hole to confirm my hunch but recollections of those very painful stingings in childhood remained very strong. I just scribbled down a note and in such a simple act established myself as a living legend, at least in the perception of one impressed client.