Wasps and Caulk
What could wasps and caulk have in common? This one job.
The homeowner was a very nice old man with an oxygen tank and a cigarette in his mouth. My first thoughts was "Please don't blow us up." Seems he had been smoking while on oxygen for years. He said hello every morning and goodbye every evening but stayed out of the way all day.
We knew there were a few wasps flying around the house and was careful with the repairs. One guy was on the corner of the house removing a few pieces of rotten siding and I was on a ladder beside him. When he pulled out on the board, I heard humming of wings and eased down the ladder. He looked inside and called for me to get down. Oops. I was already down and back with the wasp spray. There were thousands in just this one little spot.
As the day heated up, they were worse. The homeowner said they never bother him so he wasn't worried about it. I guess he moved too slow for them to be alarmed. We decided to have pest control come and spray while the homeowner was at the doctor. We did not need him getting sick.
Pest control came out and looked. He even poked his head in the attic. That was a quick trip. He came back out saying there was nothing he could do about the attic. He did not have enough spray for that. He was trying to leave. We finally convinced him to spray just the outside of the home where they were going in at. He stood over fifteen foot away from the house where his spray barely hit the overhangs. I think he was scared. As he left, he said, there was no warranty and don't call him for this house again. It needed condemned. I have never seen a pest control guy scared of a bug. He was able to kill over half of them though. The next morning we came to see a huge black line all around the home filled with wasps and a few stuck hanging onto the overhang, dead.
The number one rule with wasps is do not run. They are not usually threatened by slow movements. But no matter what, they fly faster when it's hotter. And it was getting hotter.
I was on the inside of the home cutting caulk off the windows and one guy outside on a ladder to catch the window and hand the new one in. We were all moving slow as not to bother the remaining wasps. As he lifted the new window, a wasp came and buzzed his right glove. He balanced the window on the top of the ladder and swatted the wasp away. He, then, started handing the window in to me. The same wasp came back and stung him through his work glove on the same hand. I took the window and he worked his way back to the truck. I secured the window and went to check on him. He had no known allergies to wasps. By the time he walked to the truck and took his glove off, his hand had swollen to twice the size. We had no luck finding Benadryl in the truck and there were no medical facilities near or open on Saturday.
His wrist began to swell, but his breathing was fine. We found a Fred's open and stocked back up on the Benadryl. He packed in the Benadryl and we waited to see a reaction. Thirty minutes went by and the swelling was up to his elbow. He looked like Popeye the sailor man. Finally, the swelling had stopped and was beginning to go down. It seemed to have swollen in just minutes, but was taking forever to shrink. But the Benadryl was working. And he was drunk as a skunk. All the way home, singing to the windshield and the radio was not on. And everything was beautiful. He even wanted so bad to go back to the job and kill that wasp. The wasp that did this to him. He was going to hunt him down and kill him and maybe all his family too. No, definitely, all his family deserved to die too. It was an interesting drive.
We were almost done with the house and a new guy started. He was only twenty and was wearing an old style army jacket. On his first day, he was bragging about being ex-military and how tough he was. I was thinking he was full of crap, but I wanted to see what work he could do. His first task was to simply seal a window on the back of the house. Surely he could do that since he said he worked with painters, caulking for them for ten years. I gave him a case of caulk and told him to have at it. Thirty minutes later, I asked a guy to go check on him. He came back snickering and said I needed to see this for myself.
I walk around the corner and he is on a six foot ladder caulking the same window he started on. I wondered what was taking so long. He looked to only be half way. He put a little dot of caulk on the window and then wipe all of it back off. I looked down at the caulk box. He was on his third tube. Do I laugh or scream and pull my hair out. I calmly walked over and told him to get down. I went up the ladder and pulled the caulk gun all the way down one side of the window. Then I took my finger and slid it down the caulk. There, one good bead. That was all it needed. He said his fingers were too gunky to work with this caulk and that was not the way the painters did it. I explained that all caulk has a time limit on working with it. I gave him one more chance. I walked back around the corner for about ten minutes. I came back and he was still fighting with it.
I asked him to clean his fingers off and get a trash bag. And then the rant began. "You don't tell a vet to pick up trash. Are you calling me trash? I fought for this country and almost died. I was a sniper in the seals special ops. You should be paying me just to be here." Needless to say, I had nothing to say. I had one of my guys pay him and escort him home.
Later, I found out he never served. Actually, he was denied due to a lack of mental stability. And the painter job never existed either. But he did land his self in jail the next day. Friday came and he was still in jail, but he had his girlfriend call to get his check for the week he worked. Week? He didn't even make it a half a day. The next call was from his grandfather demanding his week's pay or he would sue. Wow. Where do these people come from? I finally told him to just sue me. Let's see how far this gets. (He never sued.) But when the kid got out of jail, he was at the gas station where we all met in the mornings wanting his job back. Nah, I'm not going down that road again.
But back to wasps and caulk. Everyone on the job had a caulk gun to fill holes where wasps were coming out. With millions of wasps flying around, we were lucky to have only one guy stung. And after we finished, can you believe the homeowner loved the house, but hated to loose so many of his little flying friends. The "red devils" he called them. He thought they were there to protect him. By this point I could believe it. They never stung him or even got too close to him. Us, they hated with a passion.
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