Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Yard day

I tried to perform a simple task today.. Cut the yard. Sounds easy doesn't it? It's been raining off and on lately and given my schedule I haven't gotten around to yard work in a good week or so. The grass is nearly a foot tall so I thought I would raise the mower as high as it would go and give it a whack at that level and maybe drop it down some and cut again.. As most of you would know each wheel on a push mower has a little plastic cap on it to keep from cutting your hand off on the sharp end of the metal adjuster. It's especially hard to adjust one of these buggers when its rusted due to leaving the mower in the rain one two many times.. The cap slipped off and the metal adjuster took a small chunk out of the inside knuckle bend of my right hand pinky. OUch! I go inside, stop the bleeding with a cotton ball (or boll), do the peroxide thing and neosporin topped with a bandage and I'm back out. After repairing the mower, the trimmer, and the blower it was mid afternoon and the wasps were irritable. Luckily I stocked up on wasp killer when I went to get mower parts from Lowe's. Normally wasps gather in a nest of 10 or so wasps. I found the crack in the outdoor molding where they were congregating and gave em a good dousing. I think I only pissed them off. So all day I'm afraid to cut around the left side of my house. I'm obviously more afraid of wasps than they are of me and four cans of industrial grade spray did me no good at 25 feet away.. That stuff was four dollars a can! My whole day turned into a war! I hope the neighbors didn't see me screaming and running for cover everytime I doused their nests. One of the nests had at least 30 wasps in it! I went back to Lowes late this afternoon and bought 4 more cans. They did me no good.. I finally loaded up the pump sprayer with dish liquid and water and decided I was going to have to take them out one at a time. By the end of the day I was no longer concerned with cutting the yard.. I had become obsessed and could care less if the neighbors thought I'd lost my mind. Armed with a pump sprayer I put my fears aside and went to war.. Everytime I thought I'd killed them all I would take a break only to return to find at least 5 wasps walking around on the wall as if nothing had happened. Several times I said "That's it I've had it!" But all I could do is go back to sitting and waiting for the next wasp to arrive. I began treating the situation like a hunting expedition saying things like: "Oh look at that one... big one Big ONe!" "Look at those antennae!" "I'm gonna mount that one!" "Oh you want some more?! Here ya go! Yeah I got cha now!" "Would anyone else like a taste before I put it up?" In fact, I began to enjoy it so much I just pulled up a lawn chair under the nest and just sat and waited until the next one came along. Just before dark Angela called me in to dinner and I looked around at the carnage. Dead wasps on the window sills, all over the ground, on the roof of the house. If they hadn't started this war by attacking me and one of my dogs the week before I would have let them be. Anyway I have to work tomorrow so I'll give it a rest for a day and pick up where I left off when I get off. I'm kinda looking forward to my next wasp hunting expedition.. Maybe I'll make a video.