Well the sonsabitches are finally letting up this year. It is starting to get darn chilly at night. We don’t freeze yet…but it comes close, some nights. The ones at the rod n’ gun club were just horrible. I got bit for the first time in decades.
I don’t take shit off bugs but I don’t disrespect them either. Honey bees are flying pussycats and wonderful neighbours if you don’t get them mad, and most yellow jackets can be gently shooed away. I do a super fast swat on the really aggressive ones to stun them and step on them and butt them out like a cigarette when they fall. Once I had one try to bite me and he menaced me for five minutes straight. He was too fast to swat, and I was too fast for him to get a grip on. I danced around swatting and flapping and gobbling in fright but no way was I going to run. I finally tired him out and deftly swatted him to the ground on the garage floor. Probably broke something… he was crawling round on ground and couldn’t fly. I was so damned mad at that point, I grabbed the Benz-O-Matic plumber torch off the bench, sparked it up… and went back to that bug and with cold fury I burned him down to ash! I understand hornet rage, but will not put up with it! Bastards. Hork! Spit!
The one that got me out at the club though, wasn’t aggressive at all. He was a sneaky sonofabitch that landed lightly on my arm, so softly I didn’t even feel it. I think he only got a half a stinger into me before I swatted him away. I wonder why they always get so mean and aggressive in fall…?
Glen, 99% of bees have no interest in us if we have no interest in them. They are truly just trying to be about their business. Wasps, on the other hand, seem downright mean. One of the periodic events at The Ranch is always the knocking down of wasp's nests around the house.
ReplyDeleteThis year we've had a bumper crop of those big assed hornets/paper wasps (DFW area). This stuff works a treat on them--
ReplyDeletehttps://www.homedepot.com/p/CRC-19-oz-Brake-Parts-Cleaner-Brakleen-5089/205021970
--kills 'em DRT (Dead, Right There) and doesn't stain. It will kill any vegetation that it contacts. Another product I recently tried is this one--
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Spectracide-20-oz-Wasp-and-Hornet-Aerosol-Spray-Killer-HG-95715-3/100578850
--as claimed on the label, safe for most plants. Hosed a nest in one of our shrubs, dead hornets and no ill effects on the plant.
I developed a grudge against these little bastards at an early age (11 or so). We were coming in on horseback from a day of wrangling cattle, and unknowingly rode over a nest in the ground. My saddle blanket had slipped, so we stopped and I dismounted to adjust it. Loosened the cinch, got the blanket straight, tightened the cinch back up. Don't know what took the little bastards so long to find us. As I walked back around behind my horse to mount up, I saw something out of the corner of my eye land on his rump. Just as I raised my hand to brush it away, it nailed him.
He did one of those one foot rabbit punch kicks straight back. Caught me right about my belly button. I landed flat on my back. No air on the planet, sky full of buzzing black dots. Crawled, then stumbled, then ran. Got stung four times on the back of my neck. Yeah, I hunt them down with a passion.
Up in Lubbock County you know it's coming on cold when they start hunting for cover. There would be clouds of them around any building looking for a place to winter.
ReplyDeleteDad told me that once when he was a kid, he woke up on a chilly morning to find that yellow jackets had cuddled up to him in his bed. They had gotten up under the blankets and he had to ease out of bed gently to keep from upsetting them.
I had a high value project one late fall. We were cutting from analog to digital circuits on our data radios. After hours, I swapped out to new modems and changed over to the new circuits at dispatch. I drove from Beaumont dispatch to the local repeater, made the cut, then out to Lufkin and did that repeater. I drove over to Lake Charles in the dark, and blew in there about midnight. The second time I entered the comms room, I noticed a cloud of wasps floating around the lights. I couldn't put off the swap, so I rolled my sleeves down, and fastened my top shirt button, and crawled on the floor to finish the cutover. I had those things crawling all over me. But I managed not to get stung. I had goose bumps running up and down my head and back the whole time.
Next morning I bought all the wasp killer they had at the local gas station, and went back. They were all up in a corner, a wad about the size of a king size bed pillow. I didn't leave many alive, but I ran out of spray before I ran out of targets.
I figure they are short tempered to start with, and having to move when it gets cold makes them downright furious. We've got red ones down here, and they are just like the yellow jackets we had in LBB.
I try to be a live and let live kind of guy when it comes to nature and nature's critters. However, I draw the line when it comes to wasps.
ReplyDeleteAt the time of this tale, I was living in a house that had a wooden garden shed out back where I kept shovels and rakes etc. On the day in question - late September - the weather was a very nice, warm but not humid day. It was perfect for a cookout, which my next door neighbors and a bunch of their guests were having.
I opened the shed door to put away the rake I had been using and a couple of those big red wasps flew out. You know the ones. They look like a small Chinese helicopter and will sting you for any reason or no reason. I didn't get stung, but I knew there was a nest inside that shed that I was going to have to deal with. I looked around inside and found it. It was about the size of my hand and it was up in the peak of the roof above the door. I went and got a can of the nuke-em-from-orbit spray, but there was problem. The only way I could spray that nest was from *inside* the shed.
Okay, in for a penny, in for a pound. I got inside of that shed as far back as I could and hit that nest for all it was worth.
WHOOSH!
For almost all of them it was as RHT447 described - "Dead Right There!"
Almost all.
Apparently, these waspers had had a combat air patrol out and one of the really big ones landed right in the middle of my chest and was trying to sting me through my shirt button.
AHHHHH!
I abandoned that can of spray and tore out of that shed screaming like a little girl, all the while, dancing a jig trying to not get stung.
After a minute, I calmed down. I hadn't gotten stung and that solitary wasp had disappeared for parts unknown. But it was strangely quiet.
I looked over and everyone at the neighbors party had stopped talking and were staring right at the crazy man next door - me!
I looked at them; they looked at me, and I said, "F---ing Wasps!" Every single one of them busted out laughing, as did I. They raised their cans of beer in a toast to me and invited me over.
I had had enough of gardens, shed, and wasps for the day, so I joined the party.
In Australia, we have native paper wasps, which are something of a mild IQ test. Leave them alone and they are indifferent. If they build a nest in a silly place, a nocturnal visit with a piece of lit newspaper sorts them out. Our brilliant national scientific research organisation, CSIRO decided it was clever to bring European wasps to Australia "to study". Somehow a colony escaped. We now have a slowly growing population of these wretched things in our cooler regions, which mostly do not freeze over winter. As expected, they are also adapting to our heat and slowly spreading to other parts. They really make alfresco dining a spectator sport. They are really bad and widespread throughout the forests of the South Island of NZ too.
ReplyDeleteOur experience here with yellowjackets is the hotter the temperature, the more aggressive they become. I remember many years ago, a yellowjacket taking refuge from the cool temps in my M65 jacket sleeve. It stung me when I put the jacket on (not knowing it was there of course).
ReplyDeleteMan, after flinging to the ground, I jumped in air and landed on it with both feet. I was a mite distraught you see.
Two years ago, I was mowing our pasture frontage with push mower and was attacked by hive of Africanized honey bees. How did I know they were Africanized ? Because they chased me and my wife about 200 yards before they gave up and just acted agitated. The hive was inside the water meter box and apparently, my mowing pissed them off. Took about 45 minutes for me to retrieve the mower. Bastards !