One of the great things about living in New Zealand is that we do not have to worry about snakebites or crocodile attacks.
But there is something we do need to worry about more and more - wasps.
Wasp exterminators say their business is growing rapidly.
Rob Wallace from Waimauku, west of Auckland says he died seven minutes after getting stung by a swarm of wasps. It was only the quick thinking of his family and the speed of the ambulance officers that brought him back to life.
His brush with death began when he was out trimming weeds on his section.
"I looked up and there was just a swarm of wasps around my head, and then I realised I was getting stung," he says.
Mr Wallace stumbled back to the house where he called out to his son Morgan.
"I started to feel dazed, and you know, woozy. I started coming back here and I needed to hold onto things, and I said to Morgan, 'You need to get hold of mum, 'cause I don't feel very good,' and but still not understanding the full weight of the situation."
Morgan called his mother Sandra home - and crucially 111 - as his father, covered in blood, passed out in the bathroom.
"And by the time they got back they found me in the bathroom, non-responsive, dead," says Mr Wallace.
"My heart had stopped, I was dead. They started to do CPR. Morgan was doing compressions on my chest. Sandra had to do the bagging while the ambulance officer put the adrenaline in my arm, just as I got there I actually had died."
A second emergency life support ambulance arrived, and crew administered more adrenaline and anti-histamine before Mr Wallace was taken to hospital.
"The ambulance driver said to Sandra, 'You should go out and buy a lotto ticket tomorrow, because this is as close as you'd come to death and make it.' And the doctors at the hospital said the same thing to Sandra, 'Theoretically, you shouldn't be alive, you should be dead.'"
He says his son's quick thinking is what kept him alive.
"If he hadn't called the ambulance straight away I wouldn't have made it."
Mr Wallace reckons the ambulances made it in the nick of time.
"I just wasn't meant to die that day."
Mr Wallace has been a fit surfer nearly all his life.
"In some respects it's good that it happened to me, not to Lachlan or Sandra or Morgan, because they wouldn't, it's just too much for their bodies, they wouldn't have coped," says Mr Wallace. "They wouldn't have dealt with that much venom."
But the attack has taken its toll.
"I get tired quite quickly, I still feel washed out, get a lot of headaches, um and it's all quite surreal almost bizarre in a way that you don't expect this to happen in New Zealand, that you can die from you know venom like that. That quickly."
Wasps are multiplying this year. Pest exterminator Norm Kerr says wasps account for half his business. Wasp-related callouts have doubled for his company. Many nests are in urban areas, and usually in a cavity or under a deck.
Mr Kerr been stung about 20 times in 20 years without a reaction, but he has been lucky.
Mr Wallace will have to wear a medic alert bracelet and carry a shot of adrenaline and anti-histamine pills for the rest of his life.
"That wouldn't in itself save my life," he says. "It would just give me more time until an ambulance got here."
But it is not going to stop him enjoying his life.
"You know, live your life, make the most of it, enjoy it. Sun comes up in the morning take a deep breath and smile about it."