Year in Review

2009 mostly sucked. There. I said it. Well, really it sucked from the summer on. First it was the chipmunk infestation (see my earlier post about that), then we had another problem. One day I was sitting in my living room watching TV, and I kept hearing this clicking noise. I told the wife about it and she started hearing it too. For several days we heard this noise and tried to stop it by moving the clock, changing the lightbulb (although not sure how that would have helped), and various other things. None of this worked of course, and we just suffered on with the incessant clicking. Sometimes it would stop for a while, and then it would start up again. One day, as I backed into our driveway, my wife said "Oh no!" and I knew we were in trouble. While I was backing in, she could see the corner of the house where the living room and the kitchen meet (actually, the living room juts out further then the kitchen by about 5 feet or so) and she saw GASP! Bees! Going into a tiny hole in the space where the lower roof meets the house! I know what you are thinking, Gee your house is holey! (*See the Chipmunk story previously mentioned*) But actually, none of the holes we filled in were that big, and the house is over 100 years old! Give me a break!:) But really, our house is in great condition, and we love it a lot.

So anyway, back to the Bees. We realized then that the clicking noise we heard was actually their stingers hitting the side of the house as they went in the hole and rounded the corner into where they built their nest! In my living room wall! So we unpacked the groceries and went, reluctantly, into our living room. The wife carefully placed her ear against the wall and let me just tell you, have you ever watched a horror film where you hear the sound of thousands of swarming bees? Well that is what was in our wall. And when I listened to it, I got the heebee jeebees (no pun intended) and couldn't sleep all night. It was awful! And scary! And absolutely disgusting! But, being the strong willed women that we are, we got a bunch of bee spray and suited up. Oh yes, I mean we got on long pants, hoodies, goggles and gloves in the middle of summer, when it was oh, about 9 bazillon degrees out. I wanted to take a moment here to say that these were Yellow Jackets, not Honey Bees. There's a huge difference. First of all, honey bees will not only build their nest in your wall, but your wall will most definately start oozing honey out of it. Which may sound fun, but from what I hear, replacing a wall in your house is totally not fun at all. So thank goodness that we only had yellow jackets. And I say this only because of the honey part, not because they are nicer or placid. No, if you so much as LOOK at a yellow jacket sideways, it will come after you to sting you. And don't you dare mess with its nest! So there we were, all bundled up with our ladder out, and our neighbor came out and took a picture. Great. We never did see it, but I can only imagine. I should try and get a copy from him to post here. You would get a great laugh out of it!

Back to the story. For several days we tried all different sprays. We researched and found out that you should spray them after sundown, since most would be in there at that time. We tried foam sprays and regular sprays and we nearly went out of our minds. You see, where they built it, it was nearly impossible to get to from the outside with a spray, but oh did we try! When that didn't seem to work, we called an exterminator. This lovely chap informed me they could take care of our problem for a whopping $200-$350. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't have that kind of cash just coming out of my ass. So I told him I would call him back when I thought it over. It took me all of 2 seconds to "think it over" and I decided there must be a better (i.e. cheaper) way. Then I got a brilliant idea! We would poke two small holes in the wall on the inside of the house, one above where we could hear the nest, and one below, and each of us would spray a can of foam insulation into the holes and effectively insulate the wall and crush all the bees. Can I just tell you what a genius I am? This idea worked so perfectly, I almost didn't believe it myself! For several days after I would go over to the wall and put my ear up to it, and nothing! Not a sound! Oh, I was so happy! Of course, now we know we have a mixture of insulation and dead bees in this one section of the wall, but there is no way anyone could tell unless we said something. And if the exterminators had come, we would just have the dead bees and no insulation, and be out $350.00, so we came out ahead I think. We also filled in the hole they were going in with the insulation, cut off the excess, painted it, and Voila! Everything was back to normal. The holes are undetectable, the house looks untouched, and we no longer have a disgusting swarm of bees in the wall. The whole process took us about 2-3 weeks from hearing them to figuring out what to do. And the final solution took all of 10 minutes! ugggggghhhhh!

So that was just one story about "How 2009 Almost Totally Sucked". Other topics I will cover in future posts:

• My wife's mysterious illness(es) and subsequent testing/curiousness
  
• Our son getting the Swine Flu
• Me getting all sorts of various viruses/illnesses
• My ankle/achilles tendon issues and subsequent testing/curiousness
• Our son and then my wife getting the stomach flu:( YUCK!
  

May 2010 be more healthy and less verminy for all!