GENESEO – A recent infestation of yellow jacket wasps in the Livingston County Courthouse has been eradicated by a lady exterminator extraordinaire.
For the past few weeks, the creepy bugs have been buzzing around the courtroom during proceedings. No one is known to have been stung, but according to Josephine Koch, the exterminator who bravely sprayed strategic entry points in the woodwork in the late hours on Friday, the courthouse will no longer be pestered by the flying stingers.
“In this case, they chewed through the wooden window frame,” said Josephine Koch, who has run her family’s business for 34 years. “They were affecting all three stories of the courthouse, basement, first floor, and upper floor. They may have gone in at the windows worked through the courthouse around the ducts.”
Koch said she used a lift truck to reach the wasps’ entry points, and sprayed insecticide on them so that bees would enter and make the entire nest sick. Koch said that this was done after court activity had stopped for the day, to minimize risk to passersby.
The concern over the insects comes from more than people’s discomfort in court. During the jury selection process for last week’s Welfare Fraud trial, one person on the jury panel had to duck out of the way as a wasp zoomed past her, and told the court she is allergic to bee stings.
On the second day of the trial, defense attorney Dan Magill stomped a wasp on the floor when it approached his client, Michele Duryea.
Court security Deputies had been keeping the wasps at bay since mid September, when a few of them could be seen swooping around the high ceiling, or perched on the courtrooms big, wide light fixtures. No wasps have disturbed court proceedings since Koch sprayed their entry points.
Koch’s Spraying Services is a family-run operation out of Pavilion. They can be reached anytime at (585) 243-4515.
PHOTO CAPTION: Image from Flickr.com