January 2000

It was in the middle of the night and I woke up from something. At first I didn't realize what it was that woke me up. I didn't remember any bad dream or something. Then I felt something itching on my leg. I scratched and wanted to go back to sleep again. But after a couple of seconds there was that itch again. And I scratched again. When after a few seconds that itch came back, but a few cms higher up my leg I started wondering what the hell was going on. Something was crawling on my leg, I was sure about that.
I threw off the cover and looked at my leg. What I saw did startle me some. There was a huge wasp slowly crawling up my leg. And I really mean HUGE. From head to end it was some 3,5-4 cms.
I'm not scared of them, I know that they only attack when they feel threatened, but that might just had happened when I was scratching my leg. Luckily it didn't. I let it crawl on my finger, it appeared to be half asleep (which was probably my luck when I was scratching) and I set it free outside the window. Then I went back to sleep.
The next night when I went to bed there was another one of those huge wasps (or maybe it was the same, I don't know) sitting on the ceiling in my bedroom. I put this one outside also, wondering where they came from.

That question was answered in the following summer.
There was some maintainance on the house. They changed the wood under the roof around the house and when they took one of the boards away they found a huge wasp's nest. And I really mean HUGE!
The size of the board that we took away was 120 x 45 cms and the space behind there was some 25 cms deep. And it was behind the WHOLE board using the entire space there. It must've taken them years to build a nest of that size and it was an impressive piece of architecture.
The nest was deserted except for a couple of dead wasps, so there was no danger anymore. I guess that the one (or two) wasps that I had in my room were hibernating somewhere in the frame of the house and accidently had found their way into my room.
Check the picture and be amazed by this (literally) great thing.