Buzzing hearing aid stirs up wasps
 |
The wasps swarmed around the pensioner's hearing aid.
Story Tools
|
STROUD, England -- An elderly man has described how a swarm of wasps that was attracted by his buzzing hearing aid attacked him while he was gardening.
Ron Packer, 82, said on Wednesday he was stung on his hands after he disturbed a nest in his garden in Stroud, in the western English county of Gloucestershire.
He moved about 10 feet (3 meters) away to look at the stings when the wasps swarmed around his hearing aid, stinging him eight more times.
"They stung me at the front and back of my hearing aid area and really homed in on it," he told The Press Association.
"I was badly stung and was left with a boxer's cauliflower ear. I couldn't wear the hearing aid for a few days or sleep on that side.
"This is something that should be drawn attention to, so people could turn the hearing aid off if anything like that happened."
Packer, who has used the same hearing aid for 30 years, said he was agile enough to escape from the insects.
Duncan Collett-Fenson, from the Association of Independent Hearing Healthcare Professionals, told the Gloucester Citizen: "There could be a connection. If Mr Packer's hearing aid had worked its way loose during his gardening then it could have been prone to feedback.
"That would have made a very high-pitched whistling or buzzing sound that the wasps could have picked up on."
But he added: "Hearing aid users shouldn't worry too much about this."
Don Streatfield, from the Gloucestershire Beekeepers Association, told the newspaper: "Wasps and bees are attracted to electrical goods, particularly ones that vibrate. And they attack in swarms, because when they sting they emit a pheromone, or chemical, telling the other wasps to help them.
"Poor Mr. Packer was a victim of that."
