Wasps Be Gone!

Before I start, let me just point you to a hilarious post about Bees from a blog I just stumbled across called Rimarama. You're going to want to bookmark/subscribe to this one. And I promise you, this post won't be as funny as hers. ;)

I'm not so much afraid of bees, or wasps or hornets... or spiders for that matter. No, that was not me flipping out yesterday because my ponytail brushed my neck and I thought it was one of our wasps out to get me. I just don't want to get stung or bitten by one. I'm fine as long as they aren't on me (or too close to me).

My husband on the other hand... let's just say he's been known to scream like a girl at the sight of one of the above mentioned pests.

For the past few weeks, every day there has been at least one (most of the time two or three) wasps hanging out on our enclosed back porch. We couldn't figure out how they were getting in. Everyday my husband would be standing at the door to the back porch, armed with wasp and hornet spray. The back porch has become a wasp/hornet spray spa. It's probably quite toxic out there, as you can see the remnants of spray on every surface (we've gone through 2 cans!). And here is the evidence from just one spot - notice the dead wasps and the foggy window?
The very day that I read and laughed hysterically at the above mentioned blog post - we decided to go outside and spray the wasp nests. There were about 4 of them hanging from the eaves out back.

Before I go on, let me just share with you... when my husband and I had first started dating, he had just sustained a shoulder injury. At first he gave me some story about how it happened. It wasn't until we had been dating for a while, and his fear of bees, wasps and spiders had come way out into the open, that he confessed his shoulder injury had been a wasp incident. He tripped over himself trying to kill a wasp.

He took a spray at the first nest and out zoomed 5 or 6 that hadn't been hit by the spray. And they were mad! Two of them came at my husband. And there he goes swatting around his head, shrieking and running backwards. He was running so fast backwards that he tripped and flipped over twice before landing. Where was I? Standing way back from the house watching his back.

I have to say the man is pretty brave. As soon as we recovered from the hysterics, he went right back at it and sprayed the other three without much incident. He sprayed and ran really fast, while I watched his back from afar.

We thought that was going to do it. But nope, not even close. They started coming in with a vengeance the next day.

But as it would happen, the next day we finally found out where they were coming in. Hubby looked out and saw like about 10 wasps gathered at the top corner of our "extra" door on the porch that we don't use. A little foam/caulk stuff solved that problem. And we haven't had any new visitors on our porch since. Now lets just hope they don't find some other way to get in.