‘Hit first and hit hardest’ is my motto in a fight and these guys were about to experience that first hand. I was tooled up with some serious firepower and bent on wiping them out before they had a chance to fight back. They were about to learn that nobody upsets my lady and gets away with it.

I’d rejected her suggestion of hiring professionals, “I can deal with this myself!” I’d told her. But now, as I prepared to face the enemy armed with only joss sticks and a can of spray mount, I began to feel nervous. If the wasps got out before I finished them off then even the biker gloves and helmet wouldn’t save me!

For over a week before the big showdown my partner had been complaining of a buzzing noise coming from the ceiling above our bed. Having not heard the noise myself I’d ignored her protestations until the day I witnessed a wasp crawl out of a crack in the corner of the bedroom. There was obviously a wasps nest somewhere in the flat roof above our bedroom. Up on the roof some loose mortar in the wall under the felting revealed the entrance to their lair.

Back to the battle. On sighting the wasp and confirming the existence of a nest I had come up with a daft plan. I would exterminate the wasps by smoking them out and coating them with spray mount as they attempted escape. I lit a fat handful of incense sticks and placed them on a high shelf in the bedroom near the crack in the ceiling. This part of my plan went smoothly and the smoke was drawn up into the crack and right on up the noses of the wasps! I made my way out onto the roof where first smoke and then wasps began to issue from the crack in the wall. I immediately opened fire with the spray mount. The wasps hit the deck, instantly paralysed by the sticky airborne goo that once underpinned the entire graphics industry in the the days before Photoshop.

As more and more wasps emerged to meet their doom, my guilt at this ghastly insect genocide grew. My discomfort was magnified when the wasps, realising it was end game for the nest, started to emerge carrying the eggs. Gulp! Grimly I continued squirting them and their unborn offspring to a sticky demise. My humanitarian sensibilities were about to get the better of me force me to call off the assault when the queen emerged, bloated and threatening, angrily abandoning her palace.

I reacted with renewed fight and let loose a volley of spray. She fought hard to stay airborne but eventually went the same way as her subjects – dispensed to the great paste-up in the sky by me and my spray mount. After the monarch fell things began to quieten down and the fight quickly drew to a sticky end. Victory was mine!

As a precaution I pointed up the mortar outside and filled the crack in the ceiling so the wasps wouldn’t be able to reoccupy the nest. Years later, when the flat roof was being repaired, the builders discovered a large but still empty wasps nest in the same corner where my epic wasps wars battle had taken place.

The wasp war happened a long time ago, back in a day when I had lots of hair and energy. Recently, when my youngest daughter complained of a wasps nest in the bay window of her room, I immediately reached for – yes, you’ve guessed it – my laptop so I could go online and get Rentokil out to deal with the nest. I’m too old and too soft now for more wasp wars!

Written by Glenn Le Santo,  journalist, social media guru and  live event reporter.