Some time ago I wrote about an animal invader in our home. Turned out to be the neighbor's cat. We have stymied her incursions with trim molding around the screening material so she cant push her way in. Problem solved.
Then there were the mice we kept getting in the attic/zolder. We kept killing them and it would get cold and more would come in. We bought some what-we-thought was mice killer. For all we know it was mouse attractant. It consisted of a little box and some seeds. The mice made their home in the box and ate the seeds and seemed to be living quite happily in our house. Finally got rid of them with some American bait and glue traps. Unpleasant to do, but can't have those critters in the house. Got more mice, used more stuff. Finally figured they were crawling up the pipes and we found some expanding foam to seal up the areas around the pipes (one hole around a pipe a small cat could have come in through) and we have been joyfully mouseless ever since.
This summer we got yet another invader. Weesps ( pronounced vaysps) or wasps. I began to see a few dead ones in the guest room. They were dead or dying and thought maybe the insect screening we had put up wasn't working completely. Kept finding wasps; kept vacuuming them up. There began to be more and more of them. Then I got near a slanted area of the roof and I could hear a whole lot of buzzing in there! I can't imagine the size of the nest if this many wasps are just the ones getting lost on their way into the outside world who happened to end up inside our guest room! Before it was over I had vacuumed up hundreds of wasps within a few weeks.
We went to the local garden store and bought a can of wasp spray. It wasn't until we got home that we realized we paid a whopping $14 for that can of insecticide! We could see where the wasps were chewing their way through the wall board of the access panel in the guest room, so we knew where to spray. So we did. With some success. We went outside and saw the wasps escaping out a hole in the roof. This is apparently where they were entering in.
We mentioned our wasp problem to a coworker, Ilona, and she said we should call the town hall. They would deal with the problem. Hmmm, interesting, so we call the townhall. Or more accurately we have our Dutch friend, Elly, call them. They are apparently out of the extermination business, but they give her references. We presume the landlord has to handle this problem, but they tell us that the problem is ours and we have to pay to have an exterminator come and rid us of this nest. Then to top it off we find out we are responsible to fix the hole in the roof. What? Seems like a normal maintenance problem to us and in the States when we rented out our home we had to pay for anything and everything that needed fixing, mending, killing, or maintaining. After all we owned the home. That is partly what the rent was for. At this point we take a deep breath and remind ourselves that we are not in Kansas any more. So of course, it isn't going to be the same. It doesn't have to make sense to us, it makes sense to the people here.
We cant imagine how much fixing a roof is going to cost. It was about $50.00 for a ten minute job to kill the wasps. Labor costs are high. Then we find there is a reprieve if the hole was pre-existing. Fortunately further exploration of the situation reveals that the hole was there already and the wasps just exploited it, so the landlord is responsible to have it fixed. I suspect it is a costly repair because the landlord did want to argue the point. What shape was the hole, what size was it, etc. ?
The treatment seems to have worked and we have been wasp free, but we still have a hole in our roof. I sure hope they fix it soon before somebody else decides to move into it.
This summer we got yet another invader. Weesps ( pronounced vaysps) or wasps. I began to see a few dead ones in the guest room. They were dead or dying and thought maybe the insect screening we had put up wasn't working completely. Kept finding wasps; kept vacuuming them up. There began to be more and more of them. Then I got near a slanted area of the roof and I could hear a whole lot of buzzing in there! I can't imagine the size of the nest if this many wasps are just the ones getting lost on their way into the outside world who happened to end up inside our guest room! Before it was over I had vacuumed up hundreds of wasps within a few weeks.
We went to the local garden store and bought a can of wasp spray. It wasn't until we got home that we realized we paid a whopping $14 for that can of insecticide! We could see where the wasps were chewing their way through the wall board of the access panel in the guest room, so we knew where to spray. So we did. With some success. We went outside and saw the wasps escaping out a hole in the roof. This is apparently where they were entering in.
We mentioned our wasp problem to a coworker, Ilona, and she said we should call the town hall. They would deal with the problem. Hmmm, interesting, so we call the townhall. Or more accurately we have our Dutch friend, Elly, call them. They are apparently out of the extermination business, but they give her references. We presume the landlord has to handle this problem, but they tell us that the problem is ours and we have to pay to have an exterminator come and rid us of this nest. Then to top it off we find out we are responsible to fix the hole in the roof. What? Seems like a normal maintenance problem to us and in the States when we rented out our home we had to pay for anything and everything that needed fixing, mending, killing, or maintaining. After all we owned the home. That is partly what the rent was for. At this point we take a deep breath and remind ourselves that we are not in Kansas any more. So of course, it isn't going to be the same. It doesn't have to make sense to us, it makes sense to the people here.
We cant imagine how much fixing a roof is going to cost. It was about $50.00 for a ten minute job to kill the wasps. Labor costs are high. Then we find there is a reprieve if the hole was pre-existing. Fortunately further exploration of the situation reveals that the hole was there already and the wasps just exploited it, so the landlord is responsible to have it fixed. I suspect it is a costly repair because the landlord did want to argue the point. What shape was the hole, what size was it, etc. ?
The treatment seems to have worked and we have been wasp free, but we still have a hole in our roof. I sure hope they fix it soon before somebody else decides to move into it.
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