Friday, August 17, 2007

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKK!

Yes, that was me, screaming like a girl. Good thing I am one. :) Ok, so if you've known me for more than a second and a half, you know that I realllllly don't like bugs. I'd like to be one of those moms that teaches my boys that bugs are an important part of our ecosystem and that we shouldn't kill them just because we can, but I can't. Sure, we went to the Butterfly Pavilion a few weeks ago and we looked at all the bugs and I said some encouraging words as Connor reached out to touch Rosie the Tarantula, but you wouldn't catch me doing it. Those bugs were semi-ok because most of them were encased in glass. Even the bees seemed harmless flying in and out freely through a small plastic tube in the wall but see, they weren't in my space. However I vividly recall crashing my bike in a park and ride after falling off a curb because I was trying to get a bee to leave me alone (what was I, Dad, 10?). Not to mention the memory that seems to be permanently etched in Connor's brain of me calling Jeremy at work to complain that there was a gigantic spider in the living room. Yes, he was at work some 10+ miles away but...it was a spider! :) I've just never liked bugs or flying creatures and I'm sorry, but I don't think I ever will.

Getting to the point...

Yesterday morning Jeremy called me from work and started the conversation by saying "Now don't freak out, but go look out the living room window." Don't freak out???? Right... He continued, "I was waiting for Linda this morning [his coworker and carpool buddy] and I noticed something in the tree out front. It looks like the wasp nest thing you saw a few blocks over last year." Last year on one of our walks (before Logan was born), Connor and I had strolled past a house for rent and I freaked out over what I thought was a gigantic wasp nest in the tree in front of their house. I crossed over to the other side of the street and immediately called the number on the For Rent sign in the yard to tell them of this problem and I have not walked past that house since. No joke. Anyway, I looked out our front window and saw it RIGHT AWAY. How had we not noticed this monstrosity hanging just feet over our little boys' heads each day??? Before I could say much more than "Oh. My. God." Jeremy said "I've already called several people to see how to remove it and a guy is coming out to look at it this afternoon."

He came...

He saw....(from a distance of at least ten feet away, I might add)

He declared "That's the largest bald faced hornet's nest I've EVER seen. It will have to be removed immediately." Great....

Apparently bald faced hornets are "good" when they're in low traffic areas since they eat other bugs. However this nest is in a high traffic area (about 8 or 9 feet up in a tree between the sidewalk and the street) not to mention that it's across the street from a park and, oh yeah, in OUR front yard! ACK! And these hornets are more deadly because they tend to sting multiple times - they have a smooth stinger so they can pull out and sting over and over again and they apparently are partial to faces.

So, Mr. Pest Control guy came back out tonight dressed in a beekeepers suit and sprayed some sort of toxic smoke into the nest several times. This angered the hornets (of course!) and he warned us to stay inside because they'd sting anything they could. Great. Of course in the middle of all this our neighbors got home and Jeremy had to run out to tell them to stay inside for the rest of the night. And then a neighbor from down the street came walking by with her dog and Jeremy ran out the door screaming STOP and completely freaking her out. Both times the neighbors moved TOWARD the nest to get a better view of what he was talking about. Geesh. What part of deadly don't you understand? :)

Mr. Pest Control again reiterated that this is the largest nest he's ever seen, he's surprised none of us had been stung and that he stopped counting dead hornets after picking up 60 of them.

"We" are supposed to check it out in the morning and if we see anything flying around to let him know so he can come back for treatment #2. If nothing is flying then someone will come remove the nest next week. Oh, and it's so big that the guy took many pictures of it and said they are going to preserve the darn thing.

Here's Connor (with the tree in the background) posing for a picture in the rain earlier this week - yes, before we knew there were deadly hornets hanging out in that tree


The nest - it's at least as big as my head. Everything I've read online says they started to build it in the spring - we play under this tree nearly every day!


A close up of the entrance including a few of the hornets

West Nile Virus infected mosquitos, bald faced hornets, what's next? We're going camping this weekend - perhaps ticks? Ugh...

1 comment:

  1. Wow .... so this nest was being made all spring. Praise the Lord none of you were stung.I'm just shiverin thinking about how big it is. Nikki I agree, bugs are nice but please find another place to live or fly or crawl around. It makes me think of the day 2 weeks ago I had to kill a red spider. Never in my life had i seen a red one before.

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