Lost in Translation

I am in France.
Sometimes I am.
I am standing next to the swimming pool talking to Gaby.
Gaby is French.
Apparently Gaby talks like a farmer, but, because I learned French from Gaby, I hear like a farmer so all is well, or so I thought.
Gaby shows me the swimming pool cover.
He shows me the holes in the swimming pool cover.
He tells me that the wasps have eaten the swimming pool cover.
 "C'etais or ete or etait les greles." He says.
The wasps, I think. Why would the wasps suddenly attack the pool cover, pour quoi? I look very concerned and I look at the pergola. The pergola is covered in bamboo matting and some lovely vine vierge. The wasps normally eat the bamboo, you can hear them munching away as you lounge under the viney shade reading French poetry but why in the name of all that's sane would they eat the pool cover? It's plastic.
"Oui." continues Gaby "C'etais un catastrophe." Certainly it is a catastrophe if all the wasps are eating the pool covers. Then I remember that the wasps have set up home in the car as well. What are things coming to?
"Peut etre, c'est le global warming." I tell Gaby."Ils habitant dans la voiture aussi. Puis je vous montrer?" Gaby follows me to the car. I open the boot and show him how the wood wasps have set up home. They have made a beautiful nest with hexagonal baby beds made from bamboo munching and they are very happy, if a little upset at being interrupted.
"Oui," says Gaby "Et aussi les grêles a fait celui-ci." hé shows me a big dent in the car roof. The wasps have been eating the car as well. It's like 'The Birds,' the wasps have gone mad because of the exhaust fumes and nuclear power.
"Et le toit est casse." says Gaby.
The wasps are eating the roof of the house too? I am very upset. I am aware that we bought a house in an area where termites might eat one's house but at no point has anyone mentioned car eating wasps. I kiss Gaby on both cheeks and say goodbye. I watch Gaby drive off in his 4x4 and I wonder if the emissions from it and Michel's tractor next door have turned the wasps from gentle bamboo eaters into car eating, plastic munching mutants.
Much later I look up "Greles" in my French dictionary. Greles means hailstones. Guepes are wasps.
Phew!