Funny, but true. Wasps prevented a suicide attempt by a woman in Kerala's coastal district of Alappuzha a day ago.
The woman on Monday evening had climbed a BSNL mobile tower in Kayamkulam threatening to jump off it if her baby was not returned by her husband. Attempts by the police and the fire force personnel to talk her out of it did not fructify and that is when nature intervened.
Visuals of the incident on TV channels showed that as the woman was busy climbing to the top of the mobile tower, she disturbed a wasp nest there and predictably, sensing a threat to them, the wasps swarmed around her with some stinging her. Panicked and stung, the woman abandoned her suicide attempt and started to rapidly climb down the ladder on the side of the tower, screaming all the way as the wasps swarmed around her. As she neared the bottom, she jumped the last few feet into the rescue net being held at the base of the tower by the fire force personnel.
The rescue personnel were heard saying in the video that if not for the wasps, the woman would not have come down. An officer from Kayamkulam police station said the woman, a native of Tamil Nadu, was hospitalized after the incident and was under observation.
Her health condition was stable, he further said and added that police have not yet been able to contact her husband or any of her relatives as they have been unable to get these details from her till now.