How to drive away a Wasp

Two Saturdays back, I noticed a Wasp hovering around in my bathroom. Suspecting that wasps are voyeuristic, I shooed it away and closed the windows of the bathroom. I had noticed that the wasp had gone to a dark corner around the water heater and I checked it out. And I found that this creature had built up a 4 inch long “nest”.

I either had to risk breaking up that nest thereby letting lose some small wasps or I had to close the entry and exit for this wasp and let that nest wither away. The first option involved physical acts like stretching to reach a corner at an inaccessible height and on top of it, bracing oneself for stings from wasps. The second option simply necessitated the closing of the windows and door for the bathroom, though it had an inherent risk of asphyxiation. I chose the second option.

After about 10 days, I opened the windows and just two days later, last Saturday, I found the wasp flying inside the bathroom. Cursing my luck, I closed the windows again but within a couple of hours, I noticed the wasp flying around in my room even as I was undergoing a wardrobe change. Believe me, a wasp flying in the room while you are changing clothes is a scary thing. One can try to swat it, but then one runs the risk of letting it sting you. If you leave it alone, it could come harmlessly in our direction, but our senses get us to react badly and we would try running out of the room, an act that is quite impossible to perform when you have one leg inside one tube of your jammies as part of wearing it. Not that it happened to me, am just saying that it could happen to any of us.

Even today, the same wasp (what do I know, they all look the same) was flying around in one part of the room and I found that it had already built a small nest in one of the open shelves, where I had set aside some of my old and useless Cordless phones. I also saw that it was tagging along with it, a small green colored caterpillar like thingy – maybe it was its food or maybe it was part of its metamorphosis or whatever.

So, I now decided that I had to destroy the nest and send a clear message to the wasp that it had to look elsewhere to build its nest. I waited for nightfall and then bravely ventured near the nest. I rattled the phone a couple of times to ensure that there was nobody inside that nest. I even jiggled the wire on which that nest was attached and still found no sign of life. I bravely detached the wire from the phone and after a scary 20 seconds of trying to unwind the wire – part of the fear was that the green caterpillar like thingy may fall off the entrance hole of the nest and fall on my bed – I managed to pull out the wire along with the next. I dumped the whole set into my balcony and shut the door.

I am now hoping that the wasp won’t return, but just to avoid any unsavoury situation, can you please advise me on what I can do to prevent the wasp from entering my room; More importantly, the bathroom?