Road-Trip 2008: Day 9

Not too much happened today, and with time running short on the holiday that's a good thing before heading back to work. The chalet is a wonderful place to relax, but the little tiny hills around it look puny compared with what I woke to yesterday!

The chalet did have one little problem, though — it was buzzing with wasp nests. We identified about four large paper wasp nest entrances through the weatherboarding and into the roof.

Now, ordinarily I wouldn't be against paper wasps because like most insects they are defensive in nature and won't bother us humans unless we go ahead and bother them first. The problem is that where they have built their nests was right where they would consider us as a threat to their colonies. Their keen interest in our breakfast didn't help. Sadly they had to go…

The trick with these things is not to go near the nest until it's late at night when the nest is dormant. Using a red light, such as a torch covered with red cellophane, you can then carefully spray the entrances with Baygon powder. This stuff is a fine dust that's toxic to the wasps, but they carry it inside their nest as they panic, spreading it to the rest of the hive.

Baygon is also toxic for humans, and spraying wasps directly will only agitate them, so as you can see here I was well protected just in case they were slightly pissed off!