Emma Thickbroom and her two-year old son Cody were playing together in the sitting room of their flat in Wolverhampton, when their quiet afternoon turned to terror.
After hearing a “ticking noise” that she thought might be a leaking pipe, suddenly there was a loud crack as a wasps' nests fell through the ceiling and burst open, surrounding Emma and her toddler with angry wasps.
“I was sitting in the living room with him and it was getting louder and louder,” Emma said, “then there was a massive crack and they all came flying out.”
'It was terrifying - there were literally thousands of wasps.”
“They could have seriously hurt Cody if they'd started stinging, so I grabbed him in my arms, ran out of the room and locked the door,” the shaken mum recalled.
Emma called Wolverhampton City Council brought in pest control to fumigate the wasps. They left the flat with a carrier bag full of dead wasps, and are due to return to deal with the rest.
Mark Henderson, the director of housing for the council is astounded at what happened. “'I'm not sure we have ever seen as many wasps as this before,” he said.
'We don't provide a pest control service - that's normally the tenant's responsibility - but in this case, having seen the sheer number of wasps, we're happy to step in and help.”
Emma and Cody and now staying with her parents until the flat has been cleared.
