Tom Naughton

A few weeks ago, I walked upstairs to our mid-level family room, which is partly a playroom for the girls and partly my wife’s office.  My wife was busy typing an email, and when I started to ask her a question, she said, “Just a second, let me finish this.  Oh, and you might not want to be in here right now.  There’s a wasp flying around.”

She said this with the same degree of alarm you’d adopt while informing your spouse that there’s a cricket somewhere in the garage.

“Excuse me, did you say … wasp?”

“Yeah.  I saw it flying around up there by the ceiling fan.”  Then she went back to typing her email.

I had three immediate thoughts:

1. If there’s a wasp in the house, it’s going to sting me.
2. I must kill the wasp before it stings me, although I’ll probably be stung during the attempt.
3. When I do get stung, it will be my children’s fault.

I blamed my girls because as soon as school was out for the summer, they decided to occupy their days with an activity parents refer to as “running in and out.”  They love to be outdoors, but apparently never for more than five minutes at a time.  So, like any middle-aged dad, I’ve taken up the habit of bellowing “Close the door!” every time they run in or out.  I don’t even bother to look.  If they’ve just run in or out, I know the door is wide open.

My six-year-old believes every parental command must be accompanied by a detailed justification, so she’d already demanded to know why she has to take time out of her busy day to stop and close the door every time she runs in or out — especially since she’ll just be running back in or back out a few minutes later.  So I told her:  “There are wasps outside.  I don’t them coming into my house.  If you leave the door open, one of them will get in here.”  Obviously, she wasn’t convinced.  And now there was a wasp in the house.  The enablers were, of course, nowhere to be seen.

Just walking away and hoping the wasp would eventually leave wasn’t a possibility, because I have a history with wasps, and it isn’t pretty.  Wasps aren’t like bees.  Bees are cute.  Sure, they can sting you, but it doesn’t hurt much and you have to give them a reason — like stepping on them.  (Or, in my brother’s case, believing a rumor that if you cup your hands around them, you can carry them around and they won’t mind.)

Wasps, on the other hand, are little flying sociopaths.  If they’re having a bad day and you happen to be nearby, they’ll go after you.  And a wasp sting hurts like hell.

I found that out for the first time when I was 12.  I was watching TV when I started hearing thumps on the outside of the house.  I went outside and found some neighborhood idiots throwing rocks at what looked like a dirt pancake with holes in it, stuck to the underside of our roof.

“Uh … what are you guys doing?”

“That’s a wasp nest,” one of them explained.  I was just staring to reply when some wasps dropped from the mud pancake and then swooped into a V formation, with the point of the V aimed in our direction.  The rock-throwing idiots ran.  I was also turning to run when WHAM! — I took a direct hit in the shoulder.

If you’d asked me before this experience what a wasp sting would probably feel like, I would’ve guessed something like being pierced with a needle.  Not even close.  It feels more like a baseball player studded his Louisville Slugger with a nail and then swung for the fences, with your body having the bad luck to be in the way.  That’s because wasps drive their stingers deep — sometimes piercing the flesh — and inject a toxin at the same time.  And unlike honeybees, wasps don’t commit suicide by stinging you.  They can pull out and sting you again if they’re in the mood.

An entomologist once created a pain scale for various insect bites and stings.  A bee sting rates a 2.0 on his scale.  A wasp sting — which he described as “blinding, fierce, shockingly electric” — rates a 4.0.  Naturally, none of the neighborhood idiots who were throwing rocks at my parents’ house were afforded an opportunity to agree or disagree with the entomologist’s description.  Only I was, and I agree.

At least those wasps had a reason to attack.  A year later, I was stung again during a class picnic in a park.  We were walking through a covered structure that was, as I found out, home to at least one wasp.  Nobody was throwing rocks, and nobody was close to the wasp, which attacked from a high, beamed ceiling.  Apparently it just didn’t like seeing all those happy schoolchildren missing math class and, after looking us over, said to itself, “I bet the fat kid can’t run very fast.” I was also a victim of Seventies fashion sense:  that is, I was wearing hip-huggers that left the top of my ass exposed. 

WHAM!  Nail-studded Louisville Slugger, delivered straight to the part of the hip not being hugged.  In addition to the pain, this led to the embarrassment of being surrounded by curious classmates while my seventh-grade teacher — clearly no entomologist, in retrospect — spent several minutes on her knees, searching the top of my ass for a non-existent stinger.

Those were the actual stings that made me hate wasps.  I’ve also had some close calls.

After my freshman year in college, my dad gave me an extra summer job:  painting the exterior of the house, which was paneled with thick, vertical planks.  I could use a roller on those, but needed a brush to paint between them.

So one hot day in July, I was standing on a ladder leaned against the back of the house, holding a small bucket of paint in my left hand and a brush in my right, applying paint between the planks.  I pushed the brush into a gap where the planks met the roof, and as I pulled the brush away, I couldn’t help but notice a wasp was following it.  In the next half-second, I tossed the brush and the bucket, jumped off the ladder, sprinted the few yards to our backyard pool and dove in.  My feet only touched the ground twice.

When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I came up for air.  Then I decided I should probably go under again, mostly because the wasp took my emergence as an opportunity to fly straight at my head.  This time I swam underwater to the opposite end of the pool, then came up slowly.  The wasp was still buzzing around the other end of the pool, looking for me.  Occasionally it would land on the water and float there for awhile, then conduct another reconnaissance mission.

I kept thinking it would give up soon and go away.  It didn’t.  And that’s why, when my older brother Jerry stepped out onto the back deck some time later and saw me more or less hiding under the diving board, he asked, “What are you doing in the pool with your clothes on?”

So I explained that a wasp had driven me off the ladder and into the pool, that I’d been there for a good part of the day, keeping everything below my chin submerged, that I was planning to stay there as long as necessary, despite being fully clothed and water-logged, because the wasp was still flying around the pool and occasionally floating on top of the water, which in fact was exactly what it was doing now, and whether flying or floating, it was clearly intent on stinging me, which was also why I didn’t want to talk about it any more, since the sound of my voice could give away my location.

I explained all this by pointing and croaking, “Wasp.”

Jerry peered towards the pool, then retreated into the house without another word.  He emerged a few minutes later wearing swim trunks and a battle face.  He was also armed with a large plastic canoe paddle. He crept to the edge of the pool near the wasp, raised the paddle slowly over his head, bent his knees, then sprang over the water with a cry of “YAAAAAAAAAAHH!!”

It wasn’t Olympic form, but as Jerry entered the water in a horizontal position, he managed to land a direct paddle-smack on the wasp.  Then, over the next 15 seconds or so, he landed 347 more. 

The end result was one slightly injured and seriously pissed-off wasp, buzzing atop the water in a furious circle.  Jerry splashed to the side of the pool, grabbed the net-on-a-pole we used for scooping leaves, and netted the wasp.  He dragged the net to the bottom of the pool and left it there. 

When I was convinced the wasp didn’t have a Houdini routine its in repertoire, I finally hoisted myself out of the pool and went inside to put on dry clothes.  A half-hour later, after we’d spent the intervening time relaxing on the back deck, Jerry retrieved the net and dumped the drowned wasp on the patio near the pool.  A half-hour after that, the drowned wasp buzzed angrily a few a times, then flew away.  We didn’t stick around to see if he planned on returning.

That’s how tough wasps are.  People who say cockroaches would be only survivors of an all-out nuclear war are at least one species short in their estimate.

Now that I think about it, my near-misses with wasps always seem to involve water, because the next one occurred in a shower.  My wife and I were living in Los Angeles at the time, renting an apartment where the bathroom window was on a wall inside the shower stall.  I opened the window about a half-inch one morning before showering, and as I was shampooing my hair, I noticed something squeeze under the window sill, pause for a second, then fly towards me.  Wasp.  The only reason I wasn’t stung immediately is that a stream of water from the shower knocked the little bastard off course.

This led to what was eventually known as the Scream Like A Girl Incident, which featured me scampering naked and wet to the opposite end of the apartment, arms flailing, eyes stinging from the shampoo sliding into them and — as the incident’s title suggests — screaming like a girl.  (I recall something more like a manly yell, but my wife named the incident, and her memory of it is probably more accurate, since my brain was occupied with whatever hormones are produced during moments of primal terror.)

There was something of a repeat a year later, after we bought our first house in Burbank.  Despite living together for two years, I didn’t yet realize that when my wife loses strands of hair while shampooing, she rolls them up and sticks them to the wall of the shower.  (I didn’t realize this because she usually removes them on her way out.)  I also didn’t realize that the steam from a hot shower can cause a hairball to un-stick itself from the wall and float in the air. 

So I stepped into the shower one morning just after she’d finished — without my glasses, of course — and, after rinsing my face, opened my eyes just in time to see an out-of-focus black fuzzy thing emerge from the fog and float towards my chin. 

This led to what was eventually known as the Scream Like A Girl Incident Sequel, which ended with my wife inquiring as to why I was beating a hairball to death with my shower brush and — as the incident’s title suggests — screaming like a girl.  At least it wasn’t a real wasp.  I never found the wasp that came at me in the original Scream Like A Girl Incident, and I spent days worrying that it was still somewhere in the apartment.

So, given my experiences with wasps, I wasn’t about to just hope the one flying around our ceiling fan would go away.  In fact, it soon landed on the fan and seemed be to considering whether the metal housing, with those nice air slots, might make a good home.  I could already imagine it flying out of there someday, heading towards one of the girls.

I considered going after it with a flyswatter, but then thought of a line from The Usual Suspects:  “How do you shoot at the devil?  What if you miss?”  And missing was a definite possibility, given my batting average with the flyswatter. 

The only other option was to spray it with insecticide — the shotgun approach.  So I retrieved a can of Raid Ant and Roach Killer (Country Glade scented!) from the laundry room and started up the stairs … then realized this operation could end with the wasp driving a Raid-soaked stinger into my body.  I needed armor.  I needed to wear more layers than a wasp’s stinger can penetrate.

By the time I returned to the family room, I was wearing jeans, a tee shirt, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt with a hood, a windbreaker with a hood, a scarf, and thick winter gloves.  Both hoods were pulled tight, leaving only the area around my eyeglasses exposed.  I would have to stand on a chair to get up near the ceiling fan, and my biggest concern was that if the Raid didn’t kill the wasp immediately and I had to run, I could fall down and find myself unable to get up … sort of like Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story. 

In that case, the wasp might not even sting me right away.  It might strut around me for awhile, baggy pants hanging halfway down its little wasp ass, calling me a biatch.  Then it would drive its stinger into my hamstring through my jeans.

I slowly pulled a chair to the area below the ceiling fan, climbed aboard, and stood up even more slowly.  Son of a @#$%!  I couldn’t see the wasp.  Not high enough.  I asked my wife to go to the top of the other stairway, which leads to the second-story bedrooms.  She did.

“Can you see it?”

“Yes.  It’s walking around on the top of the motor.”

I raised my chemical weapon slowly.  “Okay … am I pointing the can of Raid at the wasp?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

PHHSSHHHHHHHHT!!  I sprayed for at least 10 seconds, eyes locked on the housing of the fan, waiting for the wasp to swoop down at me.  Then I jumped off the chair and ran up the stairs.

“Did I get it?”

“I don’t know.  I lost it in the spray, and now I can’t see it anymore.”

“Damn.”

“Good lord, that stuff smells awful.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.  Right now I’m more concerned with knowing whether the wasp is dead or just really pissed off.”

“I’ll go see.”

My wife went down the stairs and, to get a properly elevated view, climbed on top of the table she and the girls use for art projects.  It occurred to me that if the wasp flew out of the fan and stung her, I’d feel like a moron … even though it would give me a chance, for the first time in the 13 years we’ve known each other, to hear her scream like a girl.

“It’s dead.  I’ll get it.”

She grabbed a paper towel, stood on the chair I’d abandoned, and swiped at the top of the fan’s housing.  The wasp fell to the floor.  She crumpled it inside the paper towel and headed downstairs.

“Use the garbage can outside.  I’ve seen those things come back to life.”

“Okay.”

And that was The Great Wasp Hunt of 2010.  Meanwhile, another one has taken up residence in an area beneath the roof, just outside our kitchen door.  I don’t use that door much anymore.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Random Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.